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Christian Conference of Asia
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UNAIDS chief warns China over disease 'time bomb'SCMP - Monday, May 24, 2004 AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Beijing Updated at 6.05pm: The United Nations' top official on HIV/Aids on Monday urged China to act immediately to defuse a "time bomb" with the country's number of new infections doubling in two years. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, also warned that the problem was likely to spread from China's rural areas to its booming cities. "There is a fantastic opportunity to avert a major epidemic, (but) I think it's a time bomb ticking, particularly because this epidemic arrives at a moment of great transformation of Chinese society," Mr Piot told APF in an interview. Up to now, China's HIV/Aids epidemic has been concentrated in the poorest and most marginalized populations such as farmers in central provinces who had to sell blood to make a living, or drug addicts in southwest Yunnan province. But Mr Piot warned it threatens to spread to the general population. "I think it's most probable that in those provinces where they are the engines of economic development, that we will see the most Aids," Mr Piot said on an annual visit to China. "Entrepreneurs, people who are into business and will take risks, they are also sexual risk-takers - more mobility, opportunities for sex. That's also a message to the leaders, the same people who are the engines for economic development; they're the ones who are most at risk for Aids." Although the total number of infected in China - 840,000 according to widely questioned official estimates - is small compared to the population, the situation was "serious" because of the rapid rise in infections, Mr Piot said. The number of new cases that were reported doubled to 21,000 last year from 10,000 in 2002, Mr Piot said. "Just like the economy is the highest growth of GDP, well it's one of the highest growth of HIV infection. The doubling of number of diagnosed cases, not too many countries have that," Mr Piot said. He urged China to learn from countries like Russia and Indonesia where a small number of infections in localised populations quickly mushroomed in a short period and spread to the rest of the country. "It's act now or pay later," Mr Piot said. "The longer one waits, the more expensive it is, the more people will die, the more complicated it becomes to contain the epidemic, so the top priority should really be preventing the 99.9 percent of Chinese who are not infected from becoming infected." posted by cbs on Monday, May 24, 2004 |
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