60% HIV carriers infected through drug use: expert

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 27, 2003

60% HIV carriers infected through drug use: expert

About 61.6 percent of China's HIV carriers were infected through drug use, said a noted expert from the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control on Thursday.

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About 61.6 percent of China's HIV carriers were infected through drug use, said a noted expert from the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control on Thursday.

China now has approximately 840,000 HIV carriers and intravenous drug use is the major means of HIV transmission, according to Gong Xiangdong, an associate researcher with the center's venereal and leprosy disease prevention department.

Most carriers who contracted the disease by intravenous drug use were in the areas of southwestern Yunnan province, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and south China's Guangdong province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Illegal blood donation is the major channel of transmission in central China's Henan province.

Apart from drug use, noted Gong, 9.4 percent of HIV carriers were infected through blood donation, 8.4 percent through sexual transmission, 1.6 percent through blood and blood products use, 0.3 percent through mother-baby transmission and in 18.7 percent of cases the cause remained unclear.

Epidemic surveys and local monitoring stations showed that the percentage of carriers infected through drug use and illegal blooddonation were falling while those through sexual and mother-baby transmission were on rise.

The number of pregnant women carriers even reached 1.3 percent in a few areas, Gong acknowledged. These changes indicated that AIDS has spread to more ordinary people besides drug users.

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