Chinese province builds quick HIV testing stations

KUNMING -- Southwest China's Yunnan province has built stations for quick HIV testing across its rural area, the latest effort to control HIV/AIDS, provincial health authorities said.

More than 2,700 stations have been built in 800 villages, or 99 percent of townships in the province, said Jia Manhong, of the provincial disease prevention and control center.

More than 15 million people received HIV test last year in the province, and more than 90 percent of the patients among them received anti-virus treatment, according to the provincial CDC.

Lu Lin, deputy director of the provincial health and family planning commission, said the stations help patients receive treatment as quickly as possible.

Intravenous drug use used to be a major cause of HIV infections in Yunnan, as it borders the notorious Golden Triangle of narcotics in southeast Asia.

But high-risk group has expanded from drug users to ordinary people, with unprotected sex the principal means of transmission, accounting for 94 percent of new infections last year.