While 900 million farmers in China were celebrating the Spring Festival, China's Lunar New Year, an anti-AIDS program for farmer-turned-migrant workers was launched in southwest China's Yunnan province.

The population of migrant workers, mainly aged between 15 and 49, has swollen to 120 million across the country. Yunnan Province is one of the most serious AIDS-infected areas in China with a large group of migrant workers from rural areas having moved to the cities.

According to the Yunnan Provincial Commission of Population and Family Planning, the anti-AIDS program will be first tried out on a trial basis in Yunnan, and will be gradually extended to other regions in the country.

Experts with the commission said that with little education, migrant workers from the countryside have limited knowledge of how to maintain mental and physical health. They have become a high-risk group for AIDS and other infectious diseases.

(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2006)