China’s AIDS Fight Misses Drug Users, Sex Cases
Tourists visit the National Stadium, dubbed the 'Bird's Nest', where five huge banners featuring the red ribbon are put up to mark the World AIDS Day on December 1, 2008 in Beijing, China. Photograph: China Photos/Getty Images
Drug users and those infected with HIV through sex in China are more than twice as likely to die than those who got the virus from a blood transfusion, according to the nation’s first report on the death toll from AIDS.
Among those infected by blood transfusion, there were 6.7 deaths in every 100 people, compared with 15.9 deaths for injecting drug users and 17.5 for those infected through sex, researchers from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in the medical journal The Lancet today. Deaths in China fell by almost two-thirds between 2002 and 2009 as the number of patients receiving treatment jumped, they found.
China began offering free treatment for HIV patients in 2002 after thousands of people in Henan province were infected through a government-run blood donation program. More than 80 percent of those patients now have access to treatment, the study found, compared with 43 percent of injecting drug users, and 62 percent of those infected sexually.
“Too many people are found too late,” said Ray Yip, a Beijing-based director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “One clear area that China can do better is to move to improve their ability to test and diagnose people with HIV earlier, so they can benefit from the treatment.”
About 740,000 people in China are estimated to have HIV, of which 323,252 were officially reported as having the AIDS- causing virus as of 2009, the study said. The world’s deadliest pathogen killed 14.2 in every 100 infected people in China in 2009, compared with 39.3 in 2002, the researchers wrote. In the same period, the number of people receiving treatment increased from “almost zero” to 63.4 percent, they said.
Less Contagious
Drug users, prostitutes, gay and bisexual men, ethnic minorities, migrants and the elderly were at the greatest risk for missing out on treatment, the researchers wrote.
The drugs used to combat HIV reduce the virus to undetectable levels in the blood, making carriers less contagious and reducing their chances of transmitting it. Most countries, including China, recommend deferring treatment until a person’s CD4 cells -- the immune-system cells the virus attacks -- fall below a certain level to avoid the side effects and costs associated with the pills.
That may change after the results of a trial released May 13 showed that treating HIV patients as soon as they’re diagnosed can reduce their chances of infecting others by 96 percent.
“Part of our program with the Chinese government is working with them to recognize that if they treat HIV patients early and more aggressively, they will actually save a lot more money in the long run because those that they treat late may have transmitted the disease to others already,” Yip said.
People living with HIV and AIDS in China are routinely denied treatment in hospitals and face medical discrimination because of fear and ignorance about the disease, the People’s Daily reported today, citing a study by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization.
The study was funded by China’s National Centre for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention.
To contact the reporters on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jason Gale at j.gale@bloomberg.net
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