60 percent of HIV cases affect foreigners

Most cases found in Yunnan, close to the drug 'Golden Triangle'

Foreigners make up over 60 percent of HIV cases in an autonomous region in Yunnan Province and the lack of a systematic treatment for foreign HIV patients led to the disease's spread across China, a local official said recently.

A large number of foreign HIV sufferers in Yunnan have been found in recent years and in some cities and counties more than 80 percent of those infected are foreigners, said Su Hongtao, a deputy governor of the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture at the Yunnan People's Political Consultative Conference.

Su said that they found that more foreigners with HIV were diagnosed than Chinese among drug users, sex workers, pregnant women and newlyweds.

Statistics provided by Yunnan disease control center to the Global Times said that over 90 percent of HIV-infected foreigners in the province are Myanmar nationals. Of the 745 cases reported in the first 10 months of 2014, 75.4 percent were sexually transmitted and 22.7 percent were transmitted through drug use.

The lack of fixed residences and language barrier have contributed to the difficulty in controlling the spread of the HIV virus among foreigners, according to Su's report.

Su appealed for greater financial support on prevention and coordination among government departments to control the spread of the disease.

Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province borders Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos, all of which have a high HIV incidence, accounting for more than 70 percent of HIV cases in China. "This area is located near the Golden Triangle, which makes it easier for foreigners to smuggle drugs into China," Zhang Beichuan, an expert on HIV/AIDS prevention and homosexuality, told the Global Times.

Zhang added that the booming business of "buying brides" from Myanmar and Vietnam to meet the demand for wives from rural Chinese men had made the transmissions of HIV from foreigners more often.

Zhang said that as more Chinese men from some poor northern parts in China buy a Vietnamese bride or if these women work in the sex trade in more provinces, controlling the spread of AIDS might be difficult.

From 2010 to September of 2013, local entry and exit quarantine bureaus in Fujian Province found, after examining 10,552 foreign brides, that two-thirds of them were from Vietnam, and that 45 were HIV-positive, qzwb.com reported.

"The local government should give greater support to non-governmental organizations and try to develop a quick-test method, which can help identify HIV sufferers as soon as possible," said Zhang, adding that the question of how to manage foreign sufferers would be of concern to health officials from both China and international organizations.