Home>News Center>Life
         
 

China's migrant workers a high AIDS risk
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-09 16:14

China faces a tragic surge in AIDS/ HIV cases unless it curbs the spread of the disease among the vast country's transient rural workforce, a Chinese health expert said on Thursday.

Wan Shao Ping, a medical doctor and project officer with the China-UK HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Project in southwestern Sichuan province, said poorly educated migrant workers had highly risky sexual practices.

Wan told a health seminar in Hong Kong that there were at least 100 million such workers in China.

"The Chinese government is now putting a lot of attention on HIV/AIDS but we have to focus on the most risky group, this floating population," Wan told Reuters.

"Otherwise, they will carry the virus all over the country and it will cause a tragedy in China's public health system.

"According to surveys, 10 percent to 48 percent of males in this floating population exhibit highly risky sexual behavior," Wan said, adding that they often visited prostitutes.

"And in this risky group of males, 70 percent have never used condoms," he said, adding that most of them were unaware of the dangers of HIV and AIDS.

Among the women, many often resort to becoming sex workers when they cannot find other work.

"These women have up to four customers a day. They spread the virus and the men take the virus all over the country," Wan said.

"So their threat to China's HIV/AIDS problem is huge."

Although China's official estimate of 840,000 HIV/AIDS cases has raised eyebrows among international health experts, the country has recently paid more attention to the epidemic after ignoring it for years.

It has sent teams of counsellors to villages across the country to teach safe sex. But Wan said that was not enough and that more effort must be put into educating migrant workers.



Shen Aojun, a moonriver goddess
Russell Crowe sorry for phone tantrum
New baby girl coming
  Today's Top News     Top Life News
 

China rejects peppered-over UNSC reform plan

 

   
 

Kissinger: Conflict with China not an option

 

   
 

East Asia history book sets facts right

 

   
 

China plans no big military expansion

 

   
 

Rewards for good family planning

 

   
 

Housing industry cools off - Ministry report

 

   
  Sex scandal hits college
   
  Threatened chimps may hold key to AIDS
   
  Chinese most valuable TV hosts awarded
   
  China's migrant workers a high AIDS risk
   
  Israeli doctor: clot may have killed Jesus
   
  Treating culture studies more fairly
   
 
  Go to Another Section  
 
 
  Story Tools  
   
  Related Stories  
   
Beijing to abolish regulation on migrant workers
   
Guangdong lifts ban on migrant job seekers
   
Migrant workers receive their backpay
   
19US$3.9b paid back to rural migrant workers
   
Comment: Better institutions needed to protect labourers
   
Moving millions rebuild a nation
  Feature  
  1/3 Chinese youth condone premarital sex  
Advertisement