After 16 years of efforts, China has set up a preliminary AIDS monitoring system, which integrates case report with monitoring-station-based approaches, Lu Fan, an official with the China AIDS and VD Control Center, said at a national conference on AIDS monitoring held recently in this capital city of southwest China's Guizhou Province.

The system has also incorporated AIDS with VD (venereal disease) control, and blended biological monitoring with behavior monitoring, Lu added.

Last year related governmental departments issued a guideline for comprehensive AIDS and VD monitoring and began such monitoring on a trial basis in some provincial areas.

China started monitoring AIDS in 1986 and has since developed a case-report-based control system, which was believed to be too passive in collecting sufficient and accurate information.

In 1995, China launched 42 AIDS monitoring stations in 23 provincial areas of the country, implementing more active monitoring over those highly vulnerable to the disease, including VD patients, narcotics users and prostitutes.

The number of state-level monitoring stations increased to 158 by 2002, with another 200-plus at the provincial level.

By the end of 2002, more than one million HIV carriers had been registered in China, a figure which is increasing at an annual rate of more than 30 percent, according to estimates by the Ministry of Health.

There are about 100,000 people suffering from AIDS in China, according to the ministry.

(Xinhua News Agency April 1, 2003)