HIV/Aids cases up by more than 70 per cent in Shanghai

Shanghai - The number of recorded HIV/Aids infections in Shanghai has jumped by well over 70 per cent this year compared with 2005, a sharper rise than the rest of China, state media said Wednesday.

In the first 11 months of this year, the city recorded 621 new cases of HIV/Aids infections, 74 per cent higher than the full year total of 356 new cases during 2005, Xinhua news agency reported.

State press reported last week that the number of people confirmed with HIV/Aids across China at the end of October was 183,733, 27.5 per cent higher than at the end of 2005.

The newly recorded cases in Shanghai bring the total number of confirmed infections in China's biggest city to 2,261, Xinhua said Wednesday, quoting the Shanghai municipal health bureau.

Most of the sufferers were aged between 25 and 44 and 80 per cent of them were male, it said.

The virus was spread mainly through unprotected sex and shared needles among drug users, it said.

Although the number of confirmed cases in China stood at 183,733, that figure is far lower than the estimate of 650,000 HIV/Aids sufferers announced in a joint report by the United Nations and the Chinese government in January.

The disparity shows the virus remains grossly under-reported in China. Aids campaigners say this is partly due to the social stigma attached to the virus, and that the real number of sufferers could be far higher than 650,000.

Agence France Presse