The State Council has released a plan for AIDS prevention and treatment to be implemented during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, aimed at deepening healthcare reform and safeguarding people’s health.

The main objective of the plan is to promote proper prevention and treatment services, as well as implement more measures regarding prevention of needle sharing, illegal blood transfusions and mother-to-child transmission, in an effort to minimize the fatality rate and improve patients’ quality of life.

The plan involves several major tasks, such as increasing AIDS prevention awareness to over 85 percent of residents and using education to reduce AIDS-related homosexual behavior by at least 10 percent.

To achieve these goals, related departments are required to promote targeted education to increase public awareness of AIDS prevention, improve the effectiveness of intervention on transmission through sexual behaviors and drug injections, enhance the regulation on blood testing and follow-up services, fully apply the nucleic acid test to prevent mother-to-child transmission while delivering proper medical assistance and stimulating more efforts from society.

Publicity campaigns and education for key groups, such as the migrant population, teenagers, the elderly, overseas workers and people in detention, are underlined to improve their self-protection.

Efforts are also called for to crackdown on illegal activities that are closely related to the transmission of AIDS, including prostitution, drug abuse and drug trafficking.

To better prevent blood transmission of AIDS, related departments are asked to establish a long-term mechanism for blood donation and crack down on illegal blood sales while enhancing the prevention of mother-to-child transmission in remote and minority group regions.

Meanwhile, the plan urged increasing the use of traditional Chinese medicine in AIDS treatment, and guaranteeing the legitimate rights of AIDS patients to seek treatment, find jobs or go to school. And it emphasized that related departments should implement favorable social insurance policies for AIDS patients and carriers to ensure their quality of life, especially for infected children.

The State Council also vowed to enhance supervision of the implementation of related policies, improve prevention ability and guarantee the allocated funds and pharmaceutical supplies for AIDS prevention while strengthening international cooperation on research and development to make major technical breakthroughs in controlling, preventing and treating this disease.