AIDS Plagues Taiwan, 3000 People Infected with 77 DeadAccording to statistics provided by 'Taiwan Health Department', from 1984 to August this year, a total of 3377 Taiwanese are found to be HIV-positive, and claimed for 77 lives.As predicted the number of newly infected AIDS patients will exceed 600 should such a situation not be curbed. And according to an estimation of an annual growth rate of 20 percent, Taiwan's AIDS patients will reach 15,000 by 2011and by 2021, the number will increase to 40,000. If the estimation is made in terms of 5 folds of actual AIDS carriers, the patients will number 200,000 by 2021. Taiwan authorities have to spend 100 billion new Taiwan dollars for health insurance. What a surprising amount! According to reports, the current health insurance provides free cock-tail curing treatment to AIDS patients, and the expenditure on medicine hit 500 million last year, averaging 350,000 new Taiwan dollars for each patient. By PD Online staff member Li Yan |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |