AIDS spreading beyond China high risk groups

Reuters Health

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

By Tan Ee Lyn

BEIJING (Reuters) - AIDS in China has spread beyond high-risk groups
such as injecting drug users, prostitutes and homosexuals and the
country is becoming "like Africa" in how the virus is transmitted, a
senior health official says.

"There are 190 new HIV infections every day ... and in some high-
prevalence areas, nearly one percent of pregnant women are infected
with HIV," said Hao Yang, deputy director general of the bureau of
diseases prevention and control at the Ministry of Health.
"That is a very high percentage. It is a generalized epidemic," he
told Reuters in an interview.

"We're now like Africa. Last year, we found that 48 percent of those
who were newly infected contracted the disease from sex, so it's not
a disease that afflicts only high-risk groups."

Africa has the world's highest number of HIV/AIDS sufferers and the
virus is spread mostly through heterosexual sex.

To combat the problem, it is now mandatory for all entertainment
spots in China to make condoms available and methadone clinics have
mushroomed all over the country to help drug addicts kick the habit.

Hao said for China's 650,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, first-line
drugs had managed to prolong lives but some sufferers were beginning
to develop resistance -- partly because they are unaware of the
importance of keeping to strict drug regimens.

The HIV virus mutates rapidly and patients who fail to take
antiretroviral drugs in the right amounts or at the right time will
soon develop resistance -- something that is happening all too
frequently in China, activists say.

"So many patients are just taking the drugs haphazardly. Doctors
have to spend time to explain to patients how crucial it is to keep
to the regimens if they want to preserve their lives," said Meng
Lin, an AIDS activist in Beijing.

He added that some 60 village doctors were gathered in Beijing this
week to listen to the needs of people living with HIV at a forum
organized by the World Health Organization.

MORE DRUGS NEEDED

People on HIV drugs tend to develop resistance after some years and
would need "second line" medicines, but there are very few of such
stronger medicines available in China.
Often, Chinese sufferers find themselves having to choose between
putting up with the awful side effects of these drugs, or die.

"We have to prepare for this. We are now discussing with foreign
companies. In a short time, we will sign some accords with these
companies to bring in these drugs," Hao said.
Beijing was talking with companies such as Abbott and Gilead
Sciences Inc. to bring in second line drugs, Hao said. Abbott
Laboratories Inc. makes a key second-line drug called Kaletra.

Beijing and Abbott are now hammering out the price, which Hao said
was still too high for China and he called on the company to pay
heed to its "social responsibility".
Beijing provides free HIV drugs for its citizens, but non-government
groups say only very few benefit from that policy.

HIV/AIDS became a major headache for China in the 1980s and 1990s,
when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers became infected
through botched blood-selling schemes.

Although this practice has since been stopped, it has left behind
some 75,000 orphans, some of whom are infected. Those who aren't
will probably live under a long, dark shadow of stigma for the rest
of their lives.

Reuters Health