Interesting insights on AIDS in China

I was sent this very interesting article about AIDS in China today….

Letter from China: Where heroin flows, an AIDS explosion

By Jehangir S. Pocha

The Boston Globe

International Herald Tribune

June 8, 2006

KUNMING, China This scenic capital of China's southern Yunnan

Province has earned itself a more unsavory sobriquet - China's AIDS

capital.

Historically, this multi-ethnic region of stunning valleys and

gorges, including a site locals say is the fabled region of Shangri- La, stood out in mostly Han China for its uniquely diverse culture

and beauty.

Now the province, where China's first HIV cases were discovered in

the early 1990s, is home to about 30,000 of the 140,000 Chinese who

are HIV- positive, according to official reports. And that is almost

certainly an underestimate, said Yang Maobin, director of Daytop, an

HIV/AIDS care center in Kunming.

Experts say that in reality there could be as many as 200,000 HIV

cases in Yunnan and 300,000 more in the neighboring autonomous

regions of Guangxi and western Xinjiang. Part of the reason almost

half of China's HIV cases are concentrated in these areas is their

proximity to the world's largest heroin-producing areas -

Afghanistan in the case of Xinjiang and the "Golden Triangle"

countries of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos in the case of Yunnan and

Guangxi.