China to test 'high-risk' groups for HIV

China has rolled out a series of anti-HIV/AIDS measures for the next four years, including imposing intervention on high risk groups for HIV, according to an action plan for the country's anti-HIV/AIDS efforts recently issued by the State Council.

China will strive to keep the number of people living with HIV/AIDS to 1.2 million by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period(2011-2015)， with the new HIV infection rate down by 25 percent and the death rate 30 percent compared with 2010, said the plan.

More than 70 percent of people belonging to HIV high-risk groups, which include drug drug users, prostitutes and gay men, will be tested for HIV and informed of the result. Condoms will be available, free or sold by vending machines in over ninety-five percent of public spaces.

The plan also said the rate of pregnant women given a HIV antibody test should be 80 percent, and in places where HIV/AIDS have a higher occurrence, the rate should exceed 90 percent. Spouses of more than 70 percent of HIV carriers and AIDS patients will take the HIV test at least once a year.

HIV/AIDS knowledge will be fostered across the country to a larger extent, covering more than eighty-five percent of residents between the age of 15 to 60 in cities and towns, and eighty percent in rural areas.

Some 780,000 HIV carriers and AIDS patients are estimated to be living on the Chinese mainland, according to a report issued jointly by the Ministry of Health and United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS last November.

AIDS has been ranked as the deadliest infectious disease in China for the third year in a row, claiming 7,743 lives in 2010.