The city of Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, will conduct a large-scale survey on local male homosexuals for better AIDS/HIV prevention and control.

An official with the Wuhan municipal disease control center said that since 2004, the city has reported an increasing number of cases of male homosexuals contracting AIDS through male-to-malesexual contacts.

It will be the first time for Wuhan to conduct such a survey, the official added.

The survey, to be jointly conducted by the disease control center and a local male homosexual volunteer organization called "Xinyuan", will become a part of a national survey on China's male-to-male sexual contacts, sponsored by the Ministry of Scienceand Technology and the Ministry of Health and covering 10 Chinese cities.

According to well-informed sources, the survey will be performed among some 200 randomly-picked local male homosexuals, through written questionnaires and consensual blood tests, to findout the real situation of HIV and other STD (sexually-transmitted diseases) infections in this high-risk group.

(Xinhua News Agency January 23, 2006)