Hunan concern over rise in student HIV
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, November 30, 2015
The rise in the number of university students becoming infected with the HIV virus is worrying health officials in central China's Hunan Province, according to a report in China Youth Daily.
They are to promote testing at university clinics, and voluntary consultation and "behavior intervention" would be enhanced, the newspaper said.
The province recorded just four HIV cases among students in 2007 but that had risen to 138 last year, it reported. This year, so far, 154 cases have been noted.
Hunan's Health and Family Planning Ccommission said more than 90 percent of students with the virus were male, with 70 percent of them having had gay sex.
Sexual transmission between male and female students accounted for 27.5 percent of cases.
Since Hunan's first case in 1992 to October this year the province has recorded a total of 28,268 HIV infections, with 13,491 patients developing AIDS and 7,933 deaths.
This year to October, Hunan has reported 4,341 cases of HIV/AIDS including 1,483 AIDS patients, a rise of 13.2 percent over the same period in 2014.
Hunan's Center for Disease Control and Prevention said sex was the main vehicle for the spread of HIV in the province this year, responsible for 96 percent of reported cases.
Almost 80 percent were the result of heterosexual sex with 17 percent through gay sex, which rose by 27 percent over the same period of last year.
In Changsha, the provincial capital, gay sex was responsible for 49 percent of this year's cases, the center said. It noted a rise in the number of infections for people below the age of 25 and the over-50s.
At a weekend forum, the Beijing Morning Post reported, it was announced that the capital had established a research database of 8,000 homosexuals with the HIV virus, including 500 acute cases.
Beijing You'an Hospital's Dr Wu Hao, director of the research program, said in-time intervention was key to halting the spread of HIV. Wu said the program would work out guidance for HIV treatment and control to be promoted nationwide before 2020.
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