"The growing migrant population in China may be the 'tipping point' in China's battle with the AIDS epidemic," researchers Xiushi Yang and Valerian Derlega of US-based Old Dominion University and Huasong Luo of China's Yunnan University told an international population conference in Tours, France, on Friday. The growth of urban migration in China since the early 1980s has been phenomenal, with census data showing a rise from 11 million in 1982 to more than 79 million in 2000. Currently, there are an estimated 120 million urban migrants in China.

Yang and colleagues found that the risk of HIV infection among temporary urban migrants was much higher than for non-migrants. Urban migrants were four times more likely to have unprotected sex and twice as likely to have ever used illicit drugs. The researchers found that separation from the social bonds of their villages was a key factor in migrants' high-risk behavior.

Urban migrant workers, mostly males in their late teens, live together at their place of employment -- such as construction sites and restaurants -- in quarters provided by their employers or in camps on the city fringes characterized by poverty, overcrowding and lack of health services.

Official statistics suggest that the number of new infections in China doubled or tripled year-to-year in the 1990s and grew on average 44 percent between 1994-2002, said Yang and colleagues.

"AIDS has evolved from being a perceived disease of foreigners to an epidemic that has affected every population group and geographical location in the country," the researchers commented. Although the dominant route of infection remains needle sharing, sexual transmission is on the rise -- reaching 10.9 percent in 2002 -- and represents the fastest-growing source of infection.

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