There is a worrying increase in the number of elderly people diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, with the highest infection rate among prostitutes and their clients, senior health officials have revealed.

Although no official figures are available, Hao Yang, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's disease prevention and control bureau, said cases involving men and women aged 60 and over have risen by several hundred since 2007, particularly in southern China.

In the southern metropolis of Guangzhou alone, infections among people aged 50 or older are up to more than 100 a year, officials said.

The revelation highlights a possible oversight in AIDS prevention policies, which for many years have focused on younger age groups and migrant workers, experts said.

Of the 320,000 HIV-infected people in the country, 70 percent are 20 to 49 years old, the health ministry said last October. However, Hao told China Daily: "Old people have not been a priority in HIV and AIDS prevention and control campaigns, but they should be paid more attention."

Given the country's limited capacity for epidemic monitoring and reporting, the rise in infections among elderly men could even be much worse than doctors think, he said.

Due to constantly improving conditions, the Chinese are living healthier and longer, which Hao explained means more seniors, particularly men, are staying sexually active longer.

"Some of them turn to prostitutes but they face a high risk of HIV/AIDS. A great number do not use condoms," he said.

Outside an AIDS support clinic in Guangzhou, 70-year-old Zhong Ping - not his real name - was seated with dozens of others waiting to see a doctor.

He was diagnosed as HIV-positive last year and told China Daily he thinks he was infected after sleeping with women at a "sauna" in 1999. "I didn't use any protection," he said.

Alongside him in the queue at Guangzhou No 8 People's Hospital, the only hospital in Guangdong with a special AIDS unit, were parents with babies and small children, a prisoner in shackles escorted by a police officer, a young pregnant woman, and a couple in their 70s.

Sex has overtaken intravenous drug abuse as the most common method of HIV transmission in China. Of the 48,000 new cases reported in 2009, about 70 percent were infected through heterosexual or homosexual sex, according to China National Radio.

(China Daily 01/11/2010 page1)