AIDS deaths hit 'peak' as 7,700 die
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AIDS deaths are believed to be peaking on the Chinese mainland as many from the large number of people infected with HIV in the 1990s because of unsanitary blood-selling schemes develop full-blown AIDS, a senior health official said on Tuesday.
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A doctor from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Fuyang city, Anhui province, talks to workers at a construction site about avoiding AIDS/HIV earlier this month. [Photo/ China Daily] |
Hao Yang, deputy director of the disease prevention and control bureau at the Ministry of Health, made the remarks at the launch of the Tsinghua-Janssen Public Health Day on Tuesday.
By the end of last year, the total reported number of AIDS deaths had reached 68,000, according to statistics from the ministry.
Since 2008, AIDS has become the country's top infectious killer and it claimed the lives of 7,700 people in 2010 alone.
"As those infected in the 1990s have developed full-blown AIDS, the number of deaths has surged," Hao noted, adding that poor drug compliance largely because of side effects added to the number of deaths.
Between 1992 and 1997, a great number of people in rural areas in the provinces of Henan, Shanxi, Anhui and Hubei contracted the virus through contaminated blood.
The official number is unavailable.
Back then, agencies dubbed "blood heads" attracted poor farmers to become blood plasma donors by offering deals many thought were tempting.
The agencies drew patients' blood, extracted the plasma and infused the rest back into the donor, who was also paid. Many donors contracted HIV because of contaminated transfusion equipment.
In 2004, official statistics said Henan had more than 30,000 people who were infected because of the tainted plasma-selling schemes.
Zhang Beichuan, one of the country's leading AIDS/HIV scholars, said: "That figure was definitely underreported."
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