AIDS Becomes China's Deadliest Infectious Disease

Monday, February 23, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

AIDS was the top killer among infectious diseases in China for the first time last year, with 6,897 people dying in the nine months through September, a state news agency said. Though the report by the Xinhua News Agency, citing the Ministry of Health, did not explain the jump, a possible factor is the Chinese government's improved reporting of HIV/AIDS statistics in recent years as it slowly acknowledged the presence of the disease. The number of confirmed HIV infections also nearly doubled to 264,302 from 135,630 in 2005, the Xinhua report said. Neither World Health Organization nor UNAIDS representatives in Geneva commented on the report.

China long denied that AIDS was a problem, accounting in part for the low number of reported deaths. But leaders have shifted in recent years, confronting the disease more openly and promising anonymous testing, free treatment for the poor and a ban on discrimination against people with the virus.