Six state-run HIV/AIDS training bases have recently been established in China to bring in more professional staff to curb the deadly epidemic, officials said.

The bases are stationed in the provincial or municipal centers for disease prevention and control of east China's Jiangxi, northeast China's Liaoning, central China's Hubei, southwest China's Yunnan, Beijing and Shanghai.

The main task of the bases is to train public health workers to become professional staff involved in prevention work against the disease, said Hao Yang, vice director of the Ministry of Health's Disease Control Department.

"For example, by attending classes held in the bases, they are expected to be capable of carrying out improved intervention activities among groups most at risk," Hao told China Daily on Friday.

In China, the most common high-risk activities relating to HIV/AIDS are drug abuse, unsafe sexual contact and illegal blood sales.

The ministry estimates that China has 840,000 HIV/AIDS cases. Only about 100,000 sufferers have so far been registered by health authorities.

That means there are a lot of undetected HIV carriers among the general public, experts said.

If there are no effective and timely intervention measures or actions, the epidemic will infect more people.

China currently has less than 1,000 professional health workers engaged in the intervention work, Hao noted.

"It is a greatly inadequate number of workers needed to do intervention activities among thousands of high-risk people in such a big country," said Wang Ning, vice director of the National Center for STD (sexual transmitted diseases) & HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention.

The intervention activities mainly include testing and detecting HIV carriers, spreading public awareness, distributing condoms at entertainment hotspots, and making clean syringes available for drug users.

Moreover, AIDS prevention workers also need more training because many of them are not qualified at all, Hao added.

Domestic and overseas experts will be invited to go to these bases to give lectures to public health workers from disease control centers, Hao added.

In one year, about 700 people will work in HIV/AIDS prevention after completing classes at the bases, Hao noted.

However, due to the lack of professional public health workers who are the focus of the training project, the big gap between supply and increasing demand for these workers cannot be filled up in a short time, experts said.

"Moreover, China seriously lacks not only AIDS prevention workers, but also clinical doctors and lab researchers in fighting the deadly disease," Wang Ning said.

The AIDS worker shortage in rural and remote areas where about 70 percent of China's citizens infected with HIV/AIDS are living is worse than that in urban and comparatively developed areas of east and south China, said Xu Lianzhi, a well-known HIV/AIDS doctor from Beijing You'an Hospital.

Each of the six training bases will provide professional education for public health workers from five to six neighboring provinces and regions.

For example, the Yunnan HIV/AIDS training base serves a region that includes Guizhou, Hainan and Guangdong provinces and the Guanxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

(China Daily August 13, 2005)