China has set up 128 methadone clinics over the past three years since February 2003, when it began the practice of building community-based centers offering methadone to heroin addicts.

More such clinics would be approved this year with more community workers undergoing trainings related to methadone maintenance therapy, said Wang Xiangdong, an official with the National Ban Drugs Commission.

Wang made these remarks at a training program for community workers to publicize methadone substitution medication for heroin addicts in Wuhan, provincial capital of central Hubei Province on Sunday.

The Chinese government initiated in May 2001 an action plan for curbing and preventing AID/HIV during the 2001-2005 period, trumpeting the idea of carrying out an experimental work with methadone substitution medication among heroin addicts at community-based medical organizations.

The Chinese ministries of health and public security, working in cooperation with the State Food and Drug Administration, embarked on the experimental work concerning community methadone substitution medication for heroin addicts by drafting a provisional plan on the experimental work in February 2003, plus a joint national working group for the effort.

And eight medical organizations in Sichuan, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Guizhou provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were picked up as the first group of organizations authorized to conduct experiments in December 2003, said Wang.

According to experts, taking methadone -- a synthesized narcotic -- helps depress the addicts' drug desire and avoid the use of hypodermic needles that can spread HIV which leads to AIDS currently with no-cure, as well as other blood-transmitted diseases.

Moreover, those who take methadone will able to work and return to a normal life instead of looking sleepy all day long after taking heroin.

Government regulations stipulate that only drug users discharged from official detoxification centers can be entitled to the methadone program.

A latest assessment issued jointly by the Chinese Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization and the UN AIDS Program estimated there are 650,000 HIV carriers, including 75,000 AIDS patients, in China.

To curb the spread of the deadly disease, the Chinese central government allocated 801 million yuan (about 100 million U.S. dollars) to AIDS prevention and treatment in 2005 and some 280 million yuan was added by provincial governments, according to the ministry.