China plans to treat another 20,000 to 30,000 AIDS patients next year with free anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy, a senior health official said.

"By the end of last June, a total of 10,388 AIDS patients from 18 provinces have received free ARV therapy," Hao Yang, deputy head of the disease control department under the Chinese Ministry of Health, said Tuesday at a press conference hosted jointly by the Ministry of Health and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

China has an estimated 840,000 people infected with HIV, among whom 80,000 have full blown AIDS. Since a large number of the HIV carriers got infected in the mid 1990s, many of them have begun to shown AIDS symptoms and are in urgent need of treatment. In September 2003, the Chinese government announced that it would provide free ARV treatment to AIDS patients in rural areas and those urbanite sufferers with financial difficulties.

Taking ARV treatment in central Henan Province, Hao said approximately 9,000 AIDS patients in the province are now undergoing free treatment.

"Over the past one more year, nearly 3,000 patients in Henan stopped taking free ARV drugs due to strong side effects or other reasons and switched to free herbal medicine treatment," he said.

Henan is one of the most ravaged provinces by HIV/AIDS in China. By September this year, it reported 25,036 HIV cases and 11,815 AIDS patients.

"By the end of next year, the free ARV treatment is expected to cover 11,000 AIDS patients in the province," Hao said.

Providing free ARV treatment to such a huge number of AIDS patients is unparalleled neither in China nor elsewhere in the world, he acknowledged, adding China will go on improving testing and monitoring to the AIDS sufferers in the future and gradually extend the free ARV treatment to a larger area based on scientific and cautious operation.

At the press conference, Richard Feachem, executive director of the global fund affirmed China's efforts in HIV/AIDS prevention and control.

"China could avert a major AIDS epidemic through sustained commitment, continued scale up of resources at the pace it has done over the year and further expansion of its open-minded prevention activities and care to vulnerable groups," he said.

He said China has become aware the importance of fighting the epidemic vigorously not only in those provinces where the epidemic has already well established. "But also intervene vigorously in other parts of the country, where the prevalence is low and the challenge is to keep it low."

Founded in 2002, the Global Fund is a unique global public-private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The Global Fund has committed 113 million US dollars to China, among which 56 million was for HIV/AIDS, 53.5 million for tuberculosis and 3.5 million for malaria. Feachem said, "If these grants yield agreed results in their first two years, another 160 million will be available."

He went on to say that along with other international partners, the Global fund is committed to working closely with China to continue to scale up the response to HIV/AIDS.

"There are major challenges lying in front us. But I am encouraged by the progress made so far and I am encouraged by the commitment of the Chinese government and other organizations in China to seriously address the issue and to overcome HIV/AIDS," Feachem said.