The State Council has approved a special fund of 22 million yuan (US$2.6 million) per year in 2002-04 for treatment of AIDS patients in seriously stricken areas, said Zhang.

Zhang also said many patients would be able to use locally produced AIDS drugs as early as January when the medicines would be produced in batches.

"Domestic production of four kinds of AIDS drugs has been achieved so far," he told a meeting of China's highest legislators to review the health ministry's report on the reform of health care systems on Thursday in Beijing.

What he implied was more AIDS patients might be able to foot the bill since the price of homemade drugs would be only one-tenth of that of imported ones, which currently cost 30,000 yuan for one person per year in China. Few of the more than one million infected by HIV, the AIDS virus, can afford the antiretroviral combination therapy.

Zhang said that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has gradually appeared to threaten social stability and economic development in a few seriously-stricken areas.

The spread of HIV/AIDS through illegal blood plasma collection around 1995, mainly for the produc-tion of biomedical products, had affected 23 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, Zhang said. The provinces of Henan, Anhui, Hebei and Hubei are suffering the most serious consequences.

In some villages, 10 to 20 percent, even as high as 60 percent, of plasma sellers have been infected by the AIDS virus because of unhygienic practices during the collections.

But Zhang stressed that the government had taken effective measures to block HIV transmission, such as banning the illegal plasma trade and adding standard blood banks for donors.

China invested 2.25 billion yuan last year to establish or upgrade 459 blood banks in the central and western regions.

The health minister told the legislators that the fight against HIV/AIDS could be a "long-term, arduous and complicated task."

At the bimonthly meeting of the National People Congress Standing Committee, Zhang also addressed the need to further reform health care systems.

General health conditions of farmers, accounting for more than half of nearly 1.3 billion population, have barely improved in recent years.

"The gap between the urban and rural residents is widening," he said.

An old cooperative health-care system founded under the planned economy had greatly improved the health of farmers in past decades. But it fell into disrepair when the market economy swept the country.

(eastday.com December 28, 2002)