Tackling AIDS in China

In most countries a 30% increase in HIV/AIDS cases would be a cause for alarm. But in China—where new cases jumped by 183,733 year to year from Oct. 31, according to the Ministry of Health—it's a sign that the government is at least taking the deadly disease seriously.

For years Beijing insisted that HIV was a problem for other countries, and as recently as 2000 the government's official estimate of total AIDS cases was just 20,000. The reality: the number was far higher, thanks in part to a scandal in the country's Henan province that saw tens of thousands of peasants infected when they sold their blood using contaminated needles.