THE World Health Organization issued a call to action to China yesterday over HIV/AIDS as government figures said nearly half a million people are living with the disease or its precursor, with hundreds of thousands more thought to be undiagnosed.

    Bernhard Schwartlaender, the World Health Organization’s representative in China, wrote in an op-ed in the China Daily newspaper that “there is much more China needs to do” to prevent infection and better help those living with HIV.

    “Perhaps most importantly, we must eliminate stigma and discrimination towards people living with HIV, and at-risk populations such as men who have sex with men, sex workers, and injection drug users,” Schwartlaender wrote.

    The op-ed was published on World AIDS Day, a day after the National Health and Family Planning Commission said that by the end of October, a total of 497,000 people in China had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS since the country’s first case in 1985.

    The figure represents an increase from September 2013, when 434,000 people in China were known to be living with HIV/AIDS. But it was not clear whether the rise was due to an increase in infection or more cases being diagnosed. Another 154,000 have died from AIDS over the past three decades, the commission said.

    China’s National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention last year estimated that as many as 810,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in the country, including those who have not yet been diagnosed, out of a total population of 1.36 billion.

    More than a quarter of a million HIV-positive people are currently on antiretroviral treatment in China, UNAIDS China director Catherine Sozi wrote in a China Daily op-ed Saturday.

    Sexual contact is the most common means of transmission in China, followed by mother-to-baby transmission and drug needle sharing, the Family Planning Commission said. In the 1990s, rural parts of China — particularly the central province of Henan — were hit by the country’s most debilitating AIDS epidemic. It stemmed from a tainted blood donation program and infected tens of thousands of people, including entire villages. But now, sexual transmission accounts for more than 90 percent of infections, Xinhua said, citing the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDCP).

    Gay men accounted for 25 percent of new HIV cases in the first eight months of this year, according to the CCDCP, up from 19 per cent in 2012.

    (SD-Agencies)