AIDS deaths hit 'peak' as 7,700 die
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To address the problems, the government cracked down on the illegal plasma-selling schemes, enhanced safety supervision and management of blood collection, and offered free medication to all patients.
Currently, China has about 740,000 people living with AIDS/HIV, including 140,000 full-blown AIDS patients, official statistics show.
Hao urged people with the virus to accept the free medication they are entitled to and the first-line antiretroviral regimen, and said the government is making efforts to also provide free second-line drugs to those in need.
The first-line antiretroviral regimen has helped reduce the fatality rate of full-blown AIDS patients on medication from 10.8 percent in 2005 to 4.6 percent last year.
Among the 100,000 patients now on medication, 20 percent have developed resistance and need second-line treatment to survive, he said.
"Good drug compliance worked well to delay the resistance," Zhang noted.
He also urged people engaging in high-risk behavior to take free screening for HIV at designated medical institutions because early detection is important in delaying the onset of the disease.
Despite regulations that prohibit homosexuals and carriers of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, from donating blood, some gay people with HIV are believed to have donated blood and refused to declare their sexual orientation in order to avoid discrimination, Zhang said.
"That has caused sporadic cases of HIV infection among blood users," Hao disclosed, adding that widely used testing methods cannot detect HIV in the blood of people who have recently become infected.
In the past few years, men who have sex with men (MSM) have become one of the most vulnerable groups for contracting AIDS/HIV, experts said.
Among the 44,000 new HIV infections detected in 2010, nearly 13 percent were infected through gay sex, according to the Ministry of Health.
"AIDS/HIV became rampant among the MSM population which has an average HIV prevalence of 5 percent nationwide," Hao said. He noted that the infection rate is 0.05 percent among the general population.
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