Sex now the main source of AIDS spread in drug-plagued China province
November 29th, 2010 - 6:27 pm ICT by ANINew Delhi, Nov.29 (ANI): Sexual transmission appears to have overtaken drug use as the main cause of the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
According to a Xinhua news agency report, AIDS has killed up to 11,609 people in the past two decades.
It quoted local health officials, as saying that the sharing of contaminated needles among drug users was the most common cause of transmission in Yunnan in the past, but now about 71 percent of new infections reported to the health authorities in the first 10 months this year were a result of sexual contact.
Xu Heping, vice director of the provincial health bureau, revealed that about 8,670 people were afflicted with HIV/AIDS in Yunnan from January to October, and added that over 2,000 patients have died of the disease in the same period.
“The epidemic spread among spouses is alarming,” Xu said.
The ratio of infections through drug use had been declining steadily since 2005, while infections among prostitutes — a key guage for sexual transmission — remained largely unchanged, Xu added. (ANI)
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