Surge in HIV/AIDS prompts demand for all Beijing hotels to provide condoms

As a result of a surge in new HIV/AIDS cases in the first 10 months of this year, health authorities in China's capital Beijing have ordered all hotels in the city to provide condoms in every room.

Beijing has had 973 new HIV/AIDS cases in the first 10 months of this year, which is a hike of 54 percent from the previous year and now officials want all hotels to provide condoms by the end of 2008 in an attempt to curb further increases.

The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau says the hotels will be allowed to charge for the contraceptives.

The Bureau has been repeatedly calling for hotels to provide condoms in every room in recent years, but according to local government statistics to date only 133 hotels have complied out of a total of 700 throughout Beijing.

The Regulation on AIDS Prevention and Control, which was issued by China's State Council in January 2006, urged all public places to provide condoms or condom vending machines.

Last October Beijing had registered 4,663 HIV/AIDS cases since 1985, of which 171 were foreigners, 964 locals and 3,524 from other parts of China; according to an estimates by the government and United Nations health agencies in January 2006 there were 650,000 HIV/AIDS patients in China.

Reports suggest a large number of HIV-positive people in central China have developed AIDS despite receiving access to free antiretroviral drugs.

According to Chen Zhiwei, director of the AIDS Institute at the University of Hong Kong, resistance to first-line antiretrovirals is fueling the increase in AIDS cases.

Second-line antiretrovirals are not widely available and are expensive in China and patent laws prevent Chinese pharmaceutical companies from producing lower-cost versions of second-line drugs.

The AIDS Institute works to curb the spread of the disease in China and Hong Kong.