Future Watch, August 2005: China's HIV/AIDS Crisis

While SARS and avian flu make headlines across the world, another deadly, less apparent disease is creeping across China at rates that could have serious implications for the health of the Chinese people and the country’s economic future. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has spread rapidly in source areas of the Chinese population—including sex workers, intravenous drug users, and black market blood donors—and threatens to reach the breakout phase in the general population, meaning 1-2 percent of the population is infected.