US research published in the March 2003 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association has uncovered high prevalence of the sexually transmitted infection chlamydia in China. Chlamydia is a bacterial infection which can mean that an HIV-negative person is more likely to be infected with HIV if exposed to it, and an HIV-positive person is more likely to pass it on.
Urine samples from 1738 women and 1688 men between the ages of 20 and 64 were analysed for chlamydia infection. Investigators found an infection rate of 2.6% in women and 2.1% in men. However, rates of the infection were not evenly distributed around the world’s largest population. The economically developed southern coastal cities had the highest prevalence of the infection, with 16% of men and 9.9% of women having chlamydia.
A high rate of infection, 14%, was found amongst men of high income who used commercial sex workers. There was also evidence that they were passing the infection onto their partners, with the urine samples of 6% of female partners of higher income men testing positive for the sexually transmitted infection.
It’s currently thought that as many as 1 million Chinese are infected with HIV, a figure which UNAIDS is predicting will increase ten-fold by 2010 unless comprehensive HIV prevention and awareness programmes are introduced by the Chinese authorities.
Research conducted in the Spring of 2002, and reported on aidsmap, found that although approximately 90% of Chinese people had heard of HIV less than a third knew that condoms were an effective way of preventing the spread of the virus.
The investigators who conducted the chlamydia research are warning that the high rate of untreated infection discovered by their study “is an absolute set-up for how HIV can spread rapidly in a heterosexual population.
Further information on this website
Few Chinese know that condoms are an effective way of preventing HIV - News story
About the epidemic – east Asia and the pacific
Chlamydia - factsheet
Parish WL et al. Population-based study of chlamydial infection in China: a hidden epidemic. Journal of the American Medical Association, 289: 1265 – 1273, 2003.