Beijing found 311 HIV carriers, including 54 suffering from AIDS, in the first seven months of this year, up 53.2 percent and 42.1 percent, respectively, over the corresponding period last year, the municipal disaster control center said on Friday.
  
The new founding brings the total number of HIV carriers to 2,226, including 289 AIDS patients, in the Chinese capital as of the end of July.
  
Intravenous drug-use and unsafe sex are the two major channels of HIV transmission among Chinese and foreigners respectively, according to the center.
  
To curb the spread of the killer disease, the municipal government began offering free consultations and tests on the HIV virus in August last year. The municipal disease control center and disease control centers in the city's 18 districts and counties are responsible for carrying out relevant consultations and tests.
  
By the end of July, the city had offered free consultation and tests for 6,009 people, 37 of whom were found to be HIV-infected.
  
Meanwhile, Beijing has also publically promoted the use of condoms and launched a clean needle exchange project to curb the spread of the disease.
  
Official statistics show that among China's 840,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, 45 percent get infected through drug injection, 25 percent through blood transfusions and 30 percent through unsafe sex, a factor which has been rising steadily.
  
Health experts have called for reducing unprotected sexual behavior and pushing for higher condom use as "the final defense against AIDS."
  
China is carrying out "100 percent" condom use programs in provinces such as Hubei, Yunnan and Jiangsu, and is planning to extend them to Fujian and Beijing. Such measures, carrying the slogan "No Condom, No Sex", are designed to ensure condom provision in sites with sex workers.
  
Despite the "100 percent" Condom Use Project, China still faces many challenges, such as the public's lack of awareness of the importance of safe sex, certain local authorities' failure to understand the importance of HIV/AIDS prevention, low social participation and lack of access to high-quality and affordable condoms, experts say.
  
"The key to an adequate AIDS response in China lies in three changes: from policy to action, from pilots to scaling-up programs implementation and from health response to societal involvement," said Zhao Pengfei, program officer with the World Health organization (WHO) China office, at  a recent workshop held in Henan Province, central China.

(Xinhua News Agency August 27, 2005)