Many AIDS deaths avoidable: Top specialist

Eighty percent of AIDS deaths in China are due to late detection and treatment, and could have been avoided, a top specialist said.

In 2008, there were 14,590 patients who newly developed full-blown AIDS and more than 70 percent of them were first diagnosed with the disease, Wu Zunyou, director of the National Center for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Disease Control and Prevention, said.

In 2010, among the 34,188 AIDS patients reported, less than 50 percent had been previously reported as HIV carriers, official statistics showed.