A total of 3,077 new cases of HIV infection took place in colleges and universities across China in 2017, according to the National Health Commission (NHC) at a press conference on Friday.

Homosexual behavior is responsible for 81.8 percent of the new cases, added the NHC, due to students' "poor awareness of protection, despite their high awareness of the disease."

"The rate of college students who have had sexual experiences using condoms is less than 40 percent," said Han Mengjie, director of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Han emphasized that the risk of infection still remains because college students, who are sexually active, might have unprotected sex because they are susceptible to external influences.

Fifty-two colleges and universities across 11 provinces in China are equipped with vending machines that sell AIDS detection reagent for students to conduct self-examinations.

China has been making progress in terms of prevention and control of AIDS, said Wang Bin, an NHC official in charge of disease prevention, during the Friday press conference.

The spread of HIV through drug injections has been effectively controlled. In 2017, the number of people infected through drug abuse was 44.5 percent lower than that in 2012. 

The mother-to-child transmission rate also reached its historically low point last year, dropping from 7.1 percent in 2012 to 4.9 percent in 2017, Wang said.

The infection rate of AIDS in China is about 0.09 percent, which is at a low epidemic level, according to the international standard.

However, despite the low infection rate, the absolute number of infection cases is still very large due to the huge population base of China, said Wu Zunyong, director of the National Center for AIDS/STI Control and Prevention at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wang said at the press conference that the NHC will put more efforts into AIDS-related education, popularizing the use of condoms and promoting self-examinations.

(Top image via VCG)