China still faces a problem with the illegal sale of blood to hospitals, the Health Ministry said on Thursday, years after such trade sparked an AIDS outbreak in the central province of Henan.

A Chinese medical worker tests blood samples in Hefei, March 9, 2006. [Reuters]

China has promoted voluntary blood donations for decades and while they fulfill 95 percent of needs, the system had developed unevenly, the ministry said in a statement on its Web site (www.moh.gov.cn).

"The phenomenon in some areas of paying for blood supplies, or making money from blood, still exists, and there are hidden dangers for blood safety," it said.

The government would carry out a probe this year to "strike hard" against such practices, and try to better promote voluntary blood donations, the ministry said.

"We must earnestly deal with problems when they happen, solve them as fast as possible and come to a conclusion in a timely way," it added.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers in Henan were infected in the 1990s through schemes in which people sold blood to unsanitary health clinics, making the province the centre of China's AIDS epidemic.

Authorities have moved to clean up the country's blood collecting centers in recent years, but underground blood selling has persisted.

China's blood products sector in general has problems, though.

This week the food and drug regulator said it had discovered fake plasma being used in at least 18 hospitals in northeastern China.

Fake plasma had now been found in the remote Himalayan region of Tibet, the official Xinhua news agency said, though most of it had already been seized.

In one of the most highly publicized scandals, China revealed in 2004 that at least 13 babies had died from malnutrition in the eastern province of Anhui after being fed fake baby formula.

Nearly 200,000 people die each year in China from improper use of legitimate drugs, according to Jin Shiming, a committee member of the Guangdong Provincial Science and Technological Association.