Thu Jun 27, 8:20 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Thursday China was on the brink of an HIV/AIDS catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in one of its harshest assessments yet of the country's efforts to stem the spread of the deadly virus.
By the end of last year, 800,000 to 1.5 million Chinese were infected with HIV, the virus that can cause AIDS, up from 500,000 at the end of 1999, the United Nations Program on AIDS/HIV (UNAIDS) said in a report.
While the national infection rate was still far lower than in sub-Saharan Africa -- the world's worst-hit region -- prevalence in certain areas had reached explosive levels that threatened to spill into the general population through sexual transmission, the report said.
"At the dawn of the third millennium, China is on the verge of a catastrophe that could result in unimaginable human suffering, economic loss, and social devastation," said the report entitled "HIV/AIDS: China's Titanic Peril."
"Indeed, we are now witnessing the unfolding of an HIV/AIDS epidemic of proportions beyond belief, an epidemic that calls for an urgent and proper but currently yet unanswered quintessential response," it said.
China could have 10 million HIV sufferers by 2010 if no effective countermeasures were taken, UNAIDS officials said.
AIDS AWARENESS MINIMAL
The Chinese government went public with its fight against AIDS last year after state media exposed the rampant spread of HIV in rural Henan province, where farming families contracted the virus from selling plasma to illegal blood banks.
But the UNAIDS report said the government had not done enough.
"Awareness of HIV/AIDS has increased but minimally over the last several years," it said. "Millions of Chinese have never heard the word AIDS. Many still think that one can contract HIV from mosquito bites or from shaking hands. Even so there are already villages where the greater part of the population is infected."
It blamed institutional red tape, a lack of commitment and leadership by government officials, insufficient resources and a crumbling public health care system for the slow response. U.N. officials urged leaders to speak out about AIDS publicly and help to promote sterile injections and safe sex. "The virus is our enemy, not the people fighting it," said Kerstin Leitner, the U.N. resident representative in Beijing. But there was a clear message in the reference to the Titanic in the title of the report, she added.
"If the people on the bridge of that ship had acted according to the information they had, then it could have been avoided."
ALARMING TREND
China only had 30,736 officially registered HIV cases by the end of last year, mostly people incarcerated or hospitalized.
But Chinese health officials said in April an estimated 850,000 people had contracted the virus, an increase of more than a quarter of a million over last year's figure.
The most frequent modes of transmission were contaminated needles and illegal blood sales, but the spread of HIV was gaining momentum through sexual intercourse, both heterosexual and homosexual, the UNAIDS report said.
"The question that is important here is the trend and the trend is alarming," said Siri Tellier, head of the U.N. Theme Group on HIV/AIDS in China.
"It is very important to remember that low prevalence overall does not mean there is not a very high prevalence in some areas and does certainly not mean that there is not a risk of having it increase very quickly."
"What is the danger now -- and that's why we want the iceberg metaphor -- is that it's on the verge of spreading to the general population," she said.
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