SHANGHAI, China (AP) Use of dirty needles in shots and acupuncture has helped give the southern Chinese province of Guangdong one of the highest rates of hepatitis B infection in the world, officials and experts said Wednesday.
Blood samples taken from patients during hospital visits indicate 10 million people 75 percent of the province's population have had the potentially lethal disease, said Luo Huiming of the Guangdong Diseases Control and Prevention Center.
He said early surveys have indicated that two-thirds of China's 1.26 billion people have been infected. That compares with only about one in 20 Americans.
" China has the biggest hepatitis B epidemic in the world, and it is worst in southern China, including Guangdong," Luo said.
Like AIDS, hepatitis B is spread by contact with infected blood or through sex. But hepatitis B is easier to catch because it's 100 times more concentrated in the blood and can survive briefly outside the human body.
Years of screening means most of China's blood supply is probably safe from hepatitis B, said Liu Chongbo, a researcher at the China Academy of Medical Prevention. He said the most common means of transmission is dirty needles, which are often reused by doctors in poor rural areas to save money.
About 60 percent of those who have had disease caught it during childhood, usually during routine vaccinations. Mothers also infect their children during birth or while breast-feeding, Liu said.
Lack of awareness of the disease means few pregnant women test for it, he said.
People who know they are sick often fail to get treatment for fear of discrimination.
" Many hepatitis B carriers can't find jobs or are even rejected by universities. This could develop into not only a health problem but a social problem as well," Liu said.
Most of those infected with hepatitis B survive. But in acute cases, the virus attacks the liver, causing a disease called cirrhosis and cancer. These kill about 300,000 people in China each year, about 80 percent of whom had hepatitis B, Liu said.
Experts also blamed an illegal trade in needles that have been inadequately cleaned and repackaged. They also said there are increasing reports of infection from acupuncture, a traditional Chinese remedy in which dozens of needles can be stuck into the skin.
Effective vaccinations exist, and are now required for children in the United States. But at $25, they are too expensive for most Chinese and not covered by national health insurance.
Also Wednesday, the official Xinhua News Agency issued a rare warning about the spread of AIDS in China via tainted blood and unclean blood collection methods.
" China has to learn lessons from other countries that have reported many HIV/AIDS cases associated with blood transfusion, and must take determined measures to ensure blood safety," the state-run agency said.
Beijing has recently admitted it had a tainted blood problem after years of trying to silence doctors and journalists who publicized high AIDS rates in rural villages. China says 600,000 people have contracted the deadly virus, about 71 percent of them drug users who shared needles.
Xinhua quoted the Ministry of Health as saying 0.8 percent of AIDS victims got the disease from tainted blood or unclean collection methods. But it said 21 percent of infections were due to "unknown reasons."
Sex was blamed for just 7 percent of infections, Xinhua said