AIDS-related deaths are peaking in China with 7,700 in 2010, China Daily reports. Officials attribute the spike to large numbers of people now developing AIDS as a result of contracting HIV in the 1990s in unsanitary blood-selling schemes. According to the Chinese health ministry, a total of 68,000 people have died of AIDS in the country since the epidemic began. The government is urging people with HIV to accept free first-line antiretroviral medications and is making efforts to provide free second-line HIV drugs to people who have developed resistance. Currently 740,000 people are living with HIV in China, which includes 140,000 people with AIDS. Since 2008, AIDS has been China’s most deadly infectious disease.

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