Two migrant workers blow up condoms in a contest that aims to teach them about safe sex and contraception in Hefei, Anhui Province, in this file photo. [China Daily]

AIDS prevention among millions of migrant workers faces a severe challenge, as the country struggles to bring new infections under control, a senior health official has warned.

"Migrant workers have little knowledge of disease prevention due to less education and inadequate health consciousness," said Hao Yang, deputy director of the Office of the State Council Working Committee for AIDS Prevention and Control.

Statistics from the Ministry of Health report that migrant workers accounted for 23.5 percent of all new HIV infections reported in the first half of 2010, an increase from 21.3 percent in 2009 and 19.5 percent in 2008.

By the end of 2009, more than 230 million migrant workers had left the countryside for cities in China.

According to estimates on HIV made in 2009 by the Ministry of Health, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, there are approximately 740,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in China.

To address the grave challenge this presents, Hao's office, together with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, launched a Red Ribbon Health Kit Program on Monday to promote knowledge about AIDS prevention among migrant workers.

Under the program, a total of 50,000 health kits, which include condoms and a pamphlet about AIDS prevention, will be given to migrant workers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and neighboring regions, where they are heavily concentrated.

"If you simply tell people the rising rate of the disease over the past few years, they will feel that such things will never happen to them," said Wu Rulian, an officer at the International Labour Organization, which had investigated the health of migrant workers.

Wu said it is impossible to impart knowledge about HIV/AIDS to all of China's migrant workers.

"With limited funds, we should seek to spread practical information to high-risk groups, such as the use of condoms," she said.

"We have been paying close attention to the floating population since 2000, when we first found the group was more vulnerable to HIV infection," said Xu Peng, a researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

In China, the floating population refers to those who work outside their household registrations, or hukou.

Xu said that although some members of the floating population are well-educated white-collar workers, the vast majority of them are migrants who work in plants or as construction workers.

"Construction workers tend to resort to prostitution, because they cannot afford to have their wives live with them in cities," Xu said.

According to statistics from UNAIDS, 20 percent of male migrant workers said they had visited prostitutes and almost 70 percent of new HIV infections in 2009 were transmitted through sexual contact.

"The vulnerable groups include prostitutes, gay people, drug addicts and migrant workers. Among them, migrant workers are the largest group," said Chen Qingfeng, head of the policy coordination department of the Office of the State Council Working Committee for AIDS Prevention and Control.

The National Population and Family Planning Commission statistics from 2006 showed that 84 percent of migrant workers had no idea about how HIV was transmitted.

(China Daily September 28, 2010)