HIV / AIDS cases increase by 14% in China

The number of people living with HIV / AIDS in China has increased by 14%. The country's state-run media said on Saturday 29 September that by the end of June 2018, the number of people living with the infection in the country had reached 820,756 people.

The discussion took place at a national conference on HIV / AIDS in Yunnan Province, southwest China. According to national figures, 253,031 people have succumbed to the virus since the discovery of the first case in 1985.

It was also revealed at the conference that because of advances in medical technology and the increase in precautionary measures taken in hospitals, the number of HIV infections caused by transfusions blood was reduced to zero.

Authorities said that by the second quarter of 2018, 40,104 HIV / AIDS cases had been reported, the majority of which were sexually transmitted, according to the official Chinese news agency. Xinhua News.

Wang Bin, an official of the country's National Health Commission, told the conference that the country had set up "a first HIV / AIDS prevention and testing network, covering both urban and rural areas. rural. " Xinhua News.

In the late 1990s, the Chinese government received criticism from the international community after the emergence of a blood transfusion scandal that infected tens of thousands of HIV-positive people in rural China. guardian report.

In 2015, a five-year-old girl contracted HIV through blood transfusion in Fujian Province, Fujian Province. Xinhua News said that the infection was transmitted during an operation for congenital heart disease in 2010.

The girl named Maomao, 8 months old at the time of the operation, received a blood donation from eight people, one of whom was later infected with HIV.

The total number of people living in China living with HIV and AIDS reached 820,756 at the end of June, up 14% year-on-year. Https://t.co/Kecj3DKRyY pic.twitter.com/lVfunWsUfT

– China Xinhua News (@XHNews) September 29, 2018

Fujian government officials said the blood used during the operation could not be detected to contain the virus because it was in "window period", by Xinhua News report.

The window period is the time – usually two to four weeks – between the potential exposure to HIV infection and the time when the test can detect the presence of the virus. During this period, a person may be infected with HIV but his tests will remain HIV negative.

according to To avoid – a US-based non-governmental organization working on HIV education, China has made considerable efforts to tackle the HIV epidemic over a period of three decades.

The NGO reported that the Chinese national average was relatively low in terms of prevalence rate. However, the HIV epidemic represents a major health risk for some of the most affected populations in the country, including the LGBT community.

Although China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, the stigma and discrimination that homosexuals face in the country prevents them from accessing HIV services. According to a report from BBCconservative values ​​of the country push 70 to 90% of gay men to marry women.

In 2015, Xinhua News published an article on how the stigmatization of homosexuality among Chinese men hampers HIV prevention in the country. The article cited statistics from the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), which revealed a rapid growth of infections among young homosexual men.

Zhang Jinxiong, an AIDS prevention activist, said, "Many homosexuals in China are forced to have riskier and more risky relationships because stigma prevents them from keeping long-term partners. To curb the spread of HIV, China must stop discrimination against homosexuals. "