Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    FEW noticed the significance of the just-past Dec. 1. It was the 29th World AIDS Day, which was initiated by the WHO in 1988 and is dedicated to raising public awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV and mourning those who have died of the disease. Governments and health officials, nongovernmental organizations and individuals around the world observed the day, with education on AIDS prevention and control.

    A ferocious virus infection, AIDS (HIV) is highly contagious and currently incurable. Prevention is the decisive way of containing the spread of the disease, but prevention is extremely difficult due to the ways HIV is spread: primarily by unprotected sex, contaminated blood transfusions, hypodermic needles, and from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding.

    Data released by WHO demonstrate a grim picture of the silent specter posing threats to public health: There were approximately 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS by the end of 2015. Of these, 1.8 million were children; an estimated 2.1 million individuals became newly infected with HIV in 2015, including 150,000 children; an estimated 35 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic, including 1.1 million in 2015.

    China is faced with an equally severe challenge. The official number of people affected by HIV was 577,000 by the end of 2015, but the actual number could be up to 1.5 million, somewhere below or around 0.1 percent of the population.

    According to the data released by China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), 34,401 new infection cases and 8,817 deaths were reported between January and August this year.

    The alarming fact is that about 32.1 percent of Chinese infected patients have not been discovered, which means the infected cannot get timely and effective treatment, hence making them more likely to die of the disease. These unknown HIV carriers may spread the virus to more people.

    The ignorance of HIV and its prevention and treatment makes youth and adolescents the most vulnerable group to the disease. In the past five years, HIV infection cases among students, mostly males, aged 15 to 24, have increased by 35 percent annually.

    Sen, 21, fell apart when he was diagnosed with HIV. He had known almost nothing about AIDS, nor had other members in his gay community, whose members include teenage students and elderly.

    Another noteworthy feature is a historical high for HIV infections among people aged 50 or above. A new report by UNAIDS puts the global number at 5.8 million in 2015.

    In China, the number of seniors infected with HIV is also growing. Many factors have conspired to worsen the situation, such as the expanding population of singletons, particularly in rural areas, and flourishing prostitution.

    The spread is far from being under control. According to the 2015 Annual Report on Population Health compiled by Beijing City in July this year, 82.32 percent of newly infected patients are gay and are very young, 47.81 percent aged between 25 and 34 and 21.2 percent between 15 and 24.

    It’s an urgent task for health authorities to step up education efforts to prevent future cases.

    HIV prevention education should be made mandatory in middle schools throughout the country and lectures on AIDS and proper sexual behavior should be given to millions of people.

    The most effective measure for preventing AIDS is to popularize the knowledge of AIDS and its prevention.

    Thanks to constant efforts in promoting public awareness of AIDS, HIV infection rates in the U.S. have fallen each year by one-third over the past decade, a U.S. government study found. America was once the worst-hit country in terms of HIV infections.

    Local governments across China should provide high-risk groups with more measures to combat the disease such as education, early examinations and treatment.

    With HIV-positive people’s privacy protected, more infected people will voluntarily seek medical help, thus minimizing the hidden hazards of the spread on a larger scale.

    (The author is an English tutor and a freelance writer.)