Government and World Health Organisation plan to stem the pandemic by giving out condoms in hotels and night clubs. Sadly, the most likely to get Aids are the poor and migrant workers.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – China's Health Ministry said on Wednesday that reported cases of HIV/Aids jumped 30 per cent this year over last. The number of cases reached 183,733 as of October 31, up from 144,089 at the end of last year. Better screening and testing explain the rise.

Officially, there are 650,000 registered HIV-Aids cases, but world organisations estimate that the real might exceed a million most of which go unreported.

The Health Ministry said that 37 per cent of the cases reported this year were linked to drug use, 28 per cent to unsafe sex—an especially serious problem given that China now has a flourishing sex trade business—and another 5.1 per cent were caused by poor people selling blood illegally or receiving infected blood from hospitals. For instance, in recent years Aids activists have attacked government blood collection campaigns in Henan province which have led to infection among peasants and migrant workers.

The awareness campaign underway seems to be targeting hotels and other resort facilities. Dr Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn, HIV/Aids team leader for the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Beijing, was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying that giving out condoms in bars, hotels and night clubs can effectively reduce the spread of HIV. However, the number of people infected as a result of their involvement in the sex trade business remains very low, having gone from 0.02 in 1995 to just 1 per cent in 2005.

By contrast, neither the WHO nor the government mentioned the role poor health care facilities have played in spreading the virus among drug users and the poor.

A Health Ministry survey in fact shows that more than one drug users in two use needles several times and with many partners.

Those who run the most risk of being infected in big cities are migrants who have no access to health care.

In Beijing alone, for every 633 reported cases, 120 are local residents, 12 foreigners and 491 migrants.

• china
• aids/hiv
• pandemic
• awareness
• campaign
• world
• health
• organisation
• poor
• migrants