BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Health said Wednesday that the number of people officially reported as infected by HIV has risen 27.5 percent since the beginning of the year.

    By the end of October, a total of 183,733 people have been officially reported to have contracted HIV, 39,644 more than at the end of 2005, the ministry said.

    "The rise in reported cases shows that more and more Chinese are being tested for HIV, and those who test positive are being reported through China's recently improved case reporting system," Joanna Brent, spokeswoman of the World Health Organization (WHO) in China, told Xinhua.

    The updated figures show the number of officially reported AIDS patients rose to 40,667, an increase of 7,781 since the end of last year.

    The number of officially reported deaths from AIDS in the first10 months of the year reached 4,060. The ministry said altogether 12,464 people had died from AIDS in China.

    According to estimates by the ministry, the WHO and UNAIDS, China has about 650,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, including 75,000 who have developed AIDS.

    "The rise in reported figures of both HIV infections and AIDS patients indicates the situation in China is still serious and there is great danger the disease will spread further," said Hao Yang, deputy director of the ministry's Bureau of Disease Control.

    He said 37 percent of HIV infections were caused by illegal drug users sharing contaminated needles and 28 percent caused by unprotected sex.

    He said transmission through unprotected sex was increasing, with the infection rate of sex workers rising from 0.02 percent in1996 to 1 percent in 2005.

    Surveys show only 38.7 percent of sex workers use condoms and 50.8 percent of drug addicts still share needles.

    In Beijing, the health authorities have officially recorded 633new HIV cases this year, bringing the capital's total official number to 3,462.

    About 39.2 percent of those infected by HIV/AIDS were drug addicts and 26.7 percent were sex workers, said Jin Dapeng, director of Beijing Municipal Health Bureau, on Monday.

    Beijing has set up six specialist clinics providing HIV carriers with medicines and treatment in its six districts. Needle exchange centers were established in most of Beijing's urban districts and most hotels in the city provided free condoms.

    Hao noted that mass urbanization was the major reason for the spread of AIDS. By the end of October, about 185,000 migrant workers from 386 large construction sites in Beijing had received AIDS prevention education.

    Dr. Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn, HIV/AIDS team leader in the WHO's Beijing office, said commercial sex greatly contributed to the fast spread of HIV from high-risk groups to the general public.

    Providing condoms in entertainment places could effectively curb the spread of HIV, and the practice should be promoted, Wiwat said in Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China's Gansu Province on Tuesday. He was speaking at a project to promote condom use.

    He said the spread of AIDS in the general public was unlikely to happen if transmission through sex was effectively controlled.

    To reach 100-percent condom use, provincial-level governments had to raise awareness and better coordination between departments was required.

    The project is being carried out in Hubei, Yunnan, Hainan and Jiangsu provinces and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In Danzhou City of Hainan, the rate of condom use in commercial sex activities rose by 33 percent and the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea dropped significantly since the project was introduced.

    A total of 51,000 people working in Beijing's entertainment places had received AIDS prevention education.

    Brent said HIV voluntary counseling and testing services needed to be available and accessible to the Chinese people.

    "The WHO and UNAIDS are working on global guidelines that will soon be issued to encourage routine HIV testing in health care settings. The key condition for this is to ensure that strong confidentially assurances are in place and that patients are able to opt-out of getting tested for HIV if they wish," she said.

    The WHO and other partners would continue to support China in fighting AIDS, said Brent.

    "A key aspect of controlling the spread HIV/AIDS in China is scaling up existing prevention, treatment and care programs and establishing strong quality assurances," she told Xinhua.