AIDS Third-Deadliest Infection in China

By DEAN VISSER

BEIJING – AIDS surpassed hepatitis B to become China’s third-deadliest infectious disease last year, the government said Monday.

Tuberculosis was the country’s No. 1 infectious killer in 2005, followed by rabies, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing a Health Ministry report. Hepatitis B followed by tetanus in newborn babies were the fourth and fifth biggest killers.

The death rate from the deadliest infectious diseases rose by 83.3 percent last year from 2004, Xinhua said. It gave no other details or a possible reason for the sudden increase.

Xinhua said the top five deadliest infectious diseases killed 13,185 people in 2005.

The figures, however, conflict with a report released last month by the Health Ministry, the World Health Organization and the United Nations that said about 25,000 people died of AIDS alone last year in China.

The Xinhua report Monday gave no breakdown of how many people died of each disease. But it said 4.42 million cases of infectious disease were reported last year.

According to the January joint report, 70,000 people contracted HIV in China last year, most of whom were injecting drug users and sex workers. There were an estimated 650,000 people living with HIV and 75,000 with full-blown AIDS at the end of 2005, according to the report.

China had estimated in 2003 that 840,000 people had HIV and 84,000 had full-blown AIDS.

International experts said that the lower numbers did not indicate the disease was any less of a threat.

“You shouldn’t read these numbers and say, ‘Oh, these are small numbers,’” said Michel Beusenberg, a WHO spokesman in Geneva.

Estimates of the number of people in China with HIV or AIDS are based on studies of high-risk populations such as drug users, and might be different from the true figures, he said.

What experts have also said is worrying is the small but growing number of HIV infections among the general public, mostly spouses of the clients of sex workers.

If it spreads beyond that, the results could be devastating, Beusenberg said.

“You can imagine what the impact would be if it makes that jump,” he said.