CHINA plans to treat another 20,000 to 30,000 AIDS patients next year with anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy, at no charge, a senior health official said.

　　"By the end of last June, a total of 10,388 AIDS patients from 18 provinces had received free ARV therapy," Hao Yang, deputy head of the disease control department under the Chinese Ministry of Health, said on December 7 at a press conference in Beijing hosted jointly by the Ministry of Health and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

　　China has an estimated 840,000 people infected with HIV, among whom 80,000 have full blown AIDS. Since a large number of the HIV carriers became infected in the mid 1990s, many of them have begun to show AIDS symptoms and are in urgent need of treatment. In September 2003, the Chinese Government announced that it would provide free ARV treatment to AIDS patients in rural areas and those urban sufferers with financial difficulties.

　　Hao said approximately 9,000 AIDS patients in central Henan Province are now undergoing free treatment.

　　"Over the past year, nearly

　　3,000 patients in Henan stopped taking free ARV drugs due to strong side effects or other reasons and switched to free herbal medicine treatment," he said.

　　Henan is one of the provinces most ravaged by HIV/AIDS in China. By September this year, it reported 25,036 HIV cases and 11,815 AIDS patients.

　　"By the end of next year, the free ARV treatment is expected to cover 11,000 AIDS patients in the province," Hao said.

　　Providing free ARV treatment to such a huge number of AIDS patients is unparalleled in China and the world, he acknowledged, adding China will go on improving testing and monitoring of the AIDS sufferers in the future and gradually extend the free ARV treatment to a larger area, based on scientific and cautious planning.

　　At the press conference, Richard Feachem, executive director of the global fund affirmed China's efforts in HIV/AIDS prevention and control.

　　"China could avert a major AIDS epidemic through sustained commitment, continued scaling-up of resources at the pace of the last year and further expansion of its open-minded prevention activities and care to vulnerable groups," he said.

　　He said China has become aware of the importance of fighting the epidemic vigorously and not only in those provinces where the epidemic is already well established, "but also intervening vigorously in other parts of the country, where the prevalence is low and the challenge is to keep it low."

　　Founded in 2002, the Global Fund is a unique public-private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

　　The Global Fund has committed US$113 million to China - US$56 million for HIV/AIDS, US$53.5 million for tuberculosis and US$3.5 million for malaria. According to Feachem: "If these grants yield the expected results in their first two years, another 160 million will be available."

　　(Xinhua)