BEIJING -- The website of a Chinese AIDS sufferer which acts as a forum for growing numbers of victims seeking advice on how to handle HIV/AIDS has been publicized just days before a key conference on the disease.
The pink-hued site of AIDS sufferer Xiao Cai features hundreds of messages posted by potential HIV/AIDS victims trying to come to terms with the disease.
The site's archives suggest it was established around three years ago, but the state-run Xinhua news agency said on Monday it was launched ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.
The publicity also precedes a China AIDS/Sexually Transmitted Diseases conference due to be held in Beijing between Nov. 13 and 16, described by officials as China's first.
On the site, Xiao responds to a wide range of questions spanning basic issues like the general symptoms of HIV to other more complex ones like suitable medicines for confirmed sufferers.
In one anonymous message, a person admits to committing "highly dangerous acts" -- typically meaning visits to prostitutes in Chinese -- and deep fears that he has contracted HIV despite testing negative six times.
"From my own analysis of my unidentifiable symptoms in the last six months, I cannot think of any reason other than HIV so I want to ask everyone if you have had the same symptoms," the person wrote on a public message board along with a lengthy description of symptoms.
China is making slow progress in dealing with the disease still considered a taboo and has acknowledged that most Chinese know alarmingly little about it.
In a rare admission of the problem, the government said in August that reported HIV infections had surged 67.4 percent, to 3,541 in the first half of 2001.
Intravenous drug use accounted for 69.8 percent of those cases, heterosexual contact was blamed for 6.9 percent and 21 percent were due to unknown reasons, Xinhua news agency has said previously. The government does not publish statistics related to homosexuality.
The number of confirmed HIV/AIDS cases at the end of September was 28,133, although the number of HIV-positive people was estimated to be above 600,000, Xinhua said on Monday.
The number of reported cases is relatively small -- the real figure may be much higher -- and experts say social and economic changes and a sharp increase in sexually transmitted diseases suggests the potential for more sex-related cases.
The U.N. says China could have 10 million HIV/AIDS sufferers by 2010 unless it acts decisively.
