World AIDS Day: Half a Million in China Live with HIV/AIDS; Officials Blame Sexual Contact, Gay Sex

Almost half a million people in China live with HIV/AIDS, as per official figures released ahead of World AIDS Day on Monday.

4,97,000 people in China were living with HIV/AIDS till the end of October, with 1,54,000 deaths recorded in the last three decades, according to Wang Guoqiang, vice director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, China Daily reported.

Health experts have attributed a quarter of new HIV/AIDS infections in the country to MSM (men having sex with men).

25% of the cases of HIV infections reported this year were due to gay sex, Wang Ning, deputy head of the HIV/AIDS division of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

The health commission said sexual contact was the most common form of transmission of the disease, followed by mother-to-child transmission and then drug needle-sharing.

More than 90% of the cases of new transmissions were due to sexual contact, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The World Health Organisation issued a warning call to China on Monday, which was marked as World AIDS Day, with Bernhard Schwartlaender, WHO representative in China, calling for the elimination of "stigma and discrimination towards people living with HIV, and at-risk populations such as men who have sex with men, sex workers, and injecting drug users".

The figures in China are lower than in neighbouring India, where two million people are estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS.