In first infections appeared among needle sharing drug users near the Burmese border. Up until , the disease had remained a problem in the border areas before mobile people truck drivers, construction and migrant workers and travelers brought the virus further into the country.
In , the provinces of Sichuan and Xinjiang reported their first HIV cases, and by , the virus had spread all over China. Low awareness of the disease among China's general population appears to be a major culprit. Until recently, the use of condoms was not very common, even among sex workers and their clients.
As a result, the epidemic has spread from high-risk groups drug users, sex workers, unsafe blood donors to the general population. The province's first cases were reported in With a population of 44 million, Yunnan now has only health workers trained for the disease. Officials estimate that the province has 80, infected people, most of them intravenous drug users who have spread the disease by sharing needles.
In Gejiu , a city of , people on a route favored by drug traffickers, initial rounds of AIDS testing in recent years found more than 1, people with HIV, nearly all drug users or prostitutes. Unlike some other provinces, Yunnan has welcomed international nonprofit groups and support from Britain , Australia , and more recently the United States. One of the film's protagonists, a pregnant black-market operative played by Lucy Liu , makes her living as a blood smuggler.
But when several blood donors begin to get sick and die, she realizes that she may have jeopardized the health of the village's safety and beyond. On the basis of the successes of the pilot, the programme was expanded in , and plans are in place to open an additional methadone maintenance treatment clinics for about heroin users by A National Training Centre for methadone maintenance treatment has been established in Yunnan to provide clinical and technical support.
