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East Asia and Pacific
   Last updated: 18.06.04
 
UNAIDS has estimated that there were 1.2 million people living with HIV & AIDS in East Asia and the Pacific Islands by the end of 2002. Women constituted 24% of the total number of adults infected. In 2002 there were 270,000 people newly infected with HIV and 45,000 deaths due to AIDS.
The worst affected countries are;

China
There are an estimated 600,000 people living with HIV/AIDS by the end of the year 2000, according to the Chinese health ministry. The current pattern is of a series of local outbreaks across a number of provinces, mostly among injecting drug users. High rates of needle-sharing have led to rates of 70% or more in these populations.

In at least three provinces there are signs of emerging heterosexual epidemics. China's vulnerability is highlighted by a sizeable increase in sexually transmitted infections seen in recent years with growing economic inequality and mobility of people in search of work.

There is also growing recognition of the vulnerability of Chinese men who have sex with men, and pioneering efforts are being made to educate them and promote safer sex.

An additional factor that has had serious consequences in some areas, and which has compromised the ability of the authorities to mobilise society in response to AIDS, is the spread of HIV among blood and plasma donors. Tens of thousands of villagers, notably in Henan province in central China, seem to have been victims of medical malpractice driven by the greed of commercial collectors, backed by some local officials. Breathtaking practices such as the pooling of red blood cells separated from plasma donors, before those red blood cells were returned to the donors, inevitably spread a range of blood-born infections including HIV and have led to rising anger against those responsible. The Chinese authorities do not yet apper to be able to respond appropriately to this anger, although it is to be hoped that they will come to see the overriding importance of facing such problems openly and honestly.

Japan
There are an estimated 10,000 people living with HIV/ AIDS, or 0.02% of the adult population. There has been a marked shift in the proportion of transmission due to homosexual sex, which has risen to more than double the proportion due to heterosexual sex; until 1999 the proportions were equal.

Papua New Guinea
There are an estimated 5,400 people living with HIV/AIDS, or 0.22% of the adult population.