Beijing hotels told to stock condoms to combat AIDS: report

Beijing hotels told to stock condoms to combat AIDS: report
A model wears a hat and dress decorated with condoms to promote their use in Beijing. Hotels in Beijing have been ordered to stock condoms in every room in response to a spike in new HIV infections in the Chinese capital.(AFP/File/Peter Parks)BEIJING (AFP) - Hotels in China's capital have been ordered to stock condoms in every room in response to a spike in new HIV infections in Beijing, state media reported.
Beijing registered 973 new HIV/AIDS cases in the first 10 months of this year, up 54 percent on the year before, the official Xinhua news agency said.
All hotels will be required to provide condoms by the end of 2008 in an attempt to curb further increases, Xinhua said, without providing details.
Hotels will be allowed to charge for the contraceptives, the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau said.
The bureau has been pushing hotels to provide condoms in every room in recent years, but so far only 133 hotels have complied out of a total of 700 throughout Beijing, according to local government statistics.
At the end of October, Beijing had registered 4,663 HIV/AIDS cases since 1985, of which 171 were foreigners, 964 locals and 3,524 from other parts of China, Xinhua said Friday.
Nationwide there were 650,000 HIV/AIDS patients, according to an estimate put forward jointly by the government and United Nations health agencies in January 2006.