Keeping it quiet: Life as an HIV carrier

Gao Xianmei says she does not remember the date when she was diagnosed as HIV positive. There have been more important things to keep track of since that dark day, most of all, hiding it from others.

"If others know I am an HIV carrier, my whole family will be humiliated," says the 35-year-old farmer in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Since China reported its first AIDS case in 1985, the world's most populous nation has recorded 319,877 HIV infections, including 49,845 deaths by October, according to the Ministry of Health.

Yet, the statistics only include cases reported by medical facilities. The ministry and the UNAIDS estimate that China has 560,000 to 920,000 HIV carriers, with 97,000 to 112,000 AIDS patients by the end of this year.

Unsafe sex and needle sharing among intravenous drug addicts are the main causes of infections in Hezhou, a city with 2.1 million residents. Two-third of the city's 4,100 reported HIV/AIDS people were infected via the channels.

Gao was infected with HIV by her husband. When she got married in 2003, Gao, who was handicapped in early childhood, heard on their wedding day from her brother that her husband was an intravenous drug addict.

Her husband later confessed that he started using drugs when working in neighboring Guangdong province in the late 1990s. Gao did not expect anything worse would come along, though.

Drug abuse is not rare in Gao's hometown of Hezhou, which lies on a major drug-trafficking route of China from southwestern Yunnan province to Guangdong, the country's economic powerhouse.

In April last year, Gao's husband was diagnosed as HIV positive. Having no courage to tell Gao, he hid his medicines in the bushes around their house.

"I was stupid. I thought he might have cancer when a lump appeared on his neck. His little brother died of AIDS in 2005. My husband had the same symptoms," says Gao.

Her husband finally admitted his illness, begging for her forgiveness, when Gao tried to take him to the hospital for a cancer examination.

Gao remained calm. "I told him that he must get treated. It's no use blaming him. Nobody wants to have the disease," says Gao.

On the way to her own HIV test, Gao became desperate at the idea that she might have been infected.