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UPDATED: February 17, 2014 NO. 8 FEBRUARY 20, 2014
Deadly Disease on Campus
Increasing cases of HIV spark calls to better educate students
By Yuan Yuan
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BLOOD SCREENING: A medical worker from the Disease Prevention and Control Center of Dongcheng District in Beijing tests for HIV on September 10, 2013 (ZHANG CHUANDONG)

More than 10 students were diagnosed with AIDS at a university in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, in December 2013.

The diagnoses happened during an annual AIDS screening of Guangzhou's college students carried out by the Guangzhou Disease Prevention and Control Center. The test found 117 students from 48 local learning institutions, including three from high schools, to be HIV-positive.

"Not all college students take the test, which means the actual number who have been infected may be even higher," said Wang Ming, director of the center.

Wang revealed that the first HIV-positive student in Guangzhou was identified in 2002. The number of students infected by the virus has increased year on year since then.

Ninety percent of carriers were infected through homosexual activity, with MSM (men who have sex with men) making up the majority of the infected, according to Wang. "Their behavior is more out of curiosity, imitation or impulse and since they don't worry about a risk of pregnancy, more than half of them don't use condoms," he said.

On the rise

He Haolan, a contagious disease specialist at Guangdong No.8 People's Hospital, has witnessed a growing number of college students or graduates with AIDS.

"It used to be very rare to see a college student come here for an HIV test, but it has become almost common in the past two years," He said. "The youngest (AIDS) patient I met was a 15-year-old female middle school student. Almost all of them had been infected through high-risk sexual behaviors."

In Guangzhou, cases of HIV/AIDS in individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 increased from 101 in 2008 to 203 in 2012, according to Tang Xiaoping, an official with the Guangzhou Health Bureau.

Things are not looking optimistic in other regions either.

In Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province in the east, 28 college students were confirmed to be HIV-positive in 2013. Twenty-four cases were transferred through homosexual activities, and four via heterosexual intercourse.

Since the first instance of a college student being diagnosed in Hangzhou in 2005, 98 more HIV-positive college students had been confirmed in the city as of the end of 2013. Local health experts warned that the number is still increasing alongside cases of homosexual behavior between male students.

In central China's Hubei Province, official statistics show that the number of HIV-positive college students had only been recorded as 10 before 2008, while by 2013 the number had increased to 270. A survey shows that 7 percent of male college students engaged in homosexual behavior and more than half of those had not used condoms.

"The situation is very severe," said Xu Huifang, a doctor with the Guangzhou Disease Prevention and Control Center. "As a highly educated group, college students should have good knowledge of HIV and AIDS, but they tend to be unwilling to use condoms during sexual intercourse. They are becoming more and more open toward sex, but they have poor self-control."

A recent survey of 61 male homosexuals in Guangzhou showed many of them had been with multiple sex partners, and 13 percent had been with more than 21 partners. Less than half of them used condoms during sexual activities and one third of them still did not use condoms during sex even after they were confirmed as HIV-positive.

"Awareness of safe sexual practices are lacking as many engaging in male homosexual activities do not realize that HIV infection is especially prevalent among the group," Xu said.

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