CHINA: China has pledged to step up its efforts to stop the rise of HIV/Aids but activists believe the situation is set to get much worse and urged the government to admit the real extent of the epidemic.
As the world prepared to mark World Aids Day today, the Beijing government rolled out a five-year plan which health officials are confident will keep the number of people infected with HIV/Aids to below 1.5 million by 2010. Activists said the plan was unrealistic.
"This is too conservative. The official number of those infected has tripled in the last two years - it's not logical that it only be 1.5 million in five years' time," said Hu Jia, China's most prominent Aids activist.
Officially, China says it has 840,000 people infected with HIV and that 80,000 have full-blown Aids. But the United Nations believes the real figure is higher and the World Health Organisation has warned that up to 10 million could be infected by 2010 without more aggressive prevention measures.
Health minister Gao Qiang launched a five-year plan which he said would stop HIV/Aids from getting out of control, but gave few details on the project.
"The Chinese government can effectively control the momentum of the spread of Aids in the country. We need to increase funding, enhance surveillance, increase the spread of information and education on the disease," he said.
This vagueness about how the numbers will be kept down has made activists sceptical.
Beijing has been criticised by Aids activists for being too slow in admitting how widespread the disease was in China and in educating people about the illness.
During the 1990s, many Chinese people believed HIV/Aids was a disease that mostly affected foreigners, one that could be passed through shaking hands or sharing chopsticks.
Beijing has become increasingly open about its Aids epidemic and has promised to provide free HIV tests and counselling, and free anti-retroviral treatment for those who can't afford it.
President Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao have both been photographed shaking hands or embracing HIV/Aids-infected people, in a bid to encourage more openness about the disease. But people demanding better care are still routinely arrested or harassed by authorities.
"A lot of people, if they think they have these illnesses, are so terrified they just hide, so it makes it difficult for the government to have a firm handle on the numbers," said Mr Hu.
Beijing needed to allow non-governmental organisations to work on the problem if a crisis was to be averted, he said.
"There needs to be NGOs, because the people most at risk - the migrant workers, the sex workers - are afraid of the government," Mr Hu said.
Wang Longde, director of a working group on Aids, said confirmed cases of HIV infection rose by more than half in the past year, but poor monitoring and official obstruction obscure the scale of the Aids epidemic.
The central government said it would spend €80 million on stopping Aids this year, eight times more than in 2002.