Fighting a dreaded disease

Government should join hands with NGOs to use their experience and wide reach to check the spread of HIV/AIDS

Vice-Premier Li Keqiang has promised to simplify the registration process of non-governmental organizations fighting HIV/AIDS and make it easier for them to collaborate with the government to combat the dreaded disease.

According to the Ministry of Health, by the end of October, China had reported 492,191 HIV/AIDS cases on the mainland. The number is increasing fast at about 12.7 percent year-on-year in 2012. Of them, 16,131 new cases of HIV infection were reported among people aged above 50 years from January to October, an increase of 20.2 percent year-on-year, and the number of new cases among those aged between 15 and 24 was 9,514, up 12.8 percent year-on-year. Also, the number of AIDS-related deaths rose by 8.6 percent.