Friday August 24, 2001 |

BEIJING - China's government admitted the growing scale of its AIDS epidemic with rare candor yesterday, saying HIV cases nationwide had surged and confirming that hundreds of people in a single village were infected by a blood-buying operation.

Yin Dakui, a vice minister of health, chided local officials and the public for not recognizing the dangers of AIDS. His ministry said the virus was spreading especially quickly among drug users and in China's flourishing sex trade.

China faces "a very serious epidemic of HIV-AIDS," Yin said at an unusual government news conference on the issue. "In some particular regions, some leaders and also the general public there have not fully realized the hidden dangers of a full-scale epidemic of HIV-AIDS." The unusually detailed public comments by a senior official on AIDS added to recent steps suggesting the government is getting serious about combating the disease after years of denying it was a problem. This month, the government announced a campaign aimed at training health workers and educating the public. For the first time, Yin released official details on the outbreak in the central village of Wenlou, saying 43 percent of the residents who sold blood have tested positive for HIV. Wenlou is one of at least 10 villages in Henan province that saw infections from the unsanitary blood industry in the 1990s.

Collectors bought blood from villagers, pooled it and extracted plasma - the liquid part of the blood sought for medical uses. Then, instead of being thrown out as is usually done in donations, the rest of the blood was injected back into the sellers, apparently to limit their blood loss.

But because the blood was pooled, a single seller with the AIDS virus could contaminate the supply and infect many others.

"People saw this as a way to improve their lives, raise their living standards," Yin said of the blood-selling.

Yin said that local officials had failed to enforce proper health standards.

Experts estimate more than 600,000 Chinese - in a population of 1.26 billion - were infected by HIV by the end of 2000, and the health ministry has said those figures are likely accurate.

Of those, 30,000 to 50,000 are thought to have been infected by blood, mostly by selling blood and plasma, Yin said. He said some experts put the number as high as 100,000.

According to the figures released yesterday, confirmed HIV infections nationwide totaled 26,058 by the end of June. The ministry said 3,541 new infections were reported in the first half of 2001, a 67 percent surge over the 2,115 cases reported in the first six months last year.

A survey in April of 1,645 Wenlou villagers found that 318 - or 19 percent - were HIV-positive, Yin told reporters after the news conference. Among villagers who sold blood, even a larger proportion were infected - 244 out of 568, or 43 percent.

The government had been reluctant to release details, though it announced this month that it was setting up a clinic in Wenlou to treat people with AIDS. A retired physician who publicized the epidemic in Wenlou was blocked in May from visiting the United States to accept an award for her work.

Yin angrily denied that the government had tried to suppress news of the Henan crisis, saying rather it was residents who didn't want it publicized.

He said local people had told him during a recent visit that they feared publicity would damage their economy. He said villagers already find it hard to sell produce or find jobs outside the area.

Yin said villagers told him: "You're actually representing only the interests of those HIV-AIDS patients or people with HIV infections. You simply ignore the interests of the 3,000 people in Wenlou, most of whom are healthy."

"I have used a lot of time trying to persuade them and change their way of thinking," he said.

Reporting of HIV in China is haphazard. Often the only people tested are prostitutes and drug users under arrest. Nevertheless, the reported 67 percent rate of increase was sharply higher than the 30 percent rate recorded last year.

Intravenous drug abuse is the main source of infection, according to Yin's ministry. Surveys show that 5 percent of drug users test positive for the virus, up from 0.04 percent in 1995. In the worst-hit areas, the rates are much higher.

Surveys show that 37 percent of intravenous drug users share needles and syringes, the ministry said.

"We have not effectively stemmed the epidemic of AIDS through drug use, and we should further strengthen the management of blood." Yin said.

Sexual transmissions of HIV also are increasing. Among prostitutes tested, 1.32 percent were found to have the virus last year, up from none in 1995, the ministry said. Only 9.1 percent regularly make clients use condoms - a measure Chinese public health officials encourage to slow the spread of the virus.

But Yin ruled out legalizing prostitution as a way to stem infections.

"It is totally impossible for China to legalize illegal prostitution, and we should not do that," he said.