AsiaSars threat to Chinese HIV region

Thousands of migrant workers are fleeing Sars-hit cities to their homes in a Chinese province already badly affected by HIV-Aids, as fears grow that the virus could spread even more quickly in the vast rural areas.

More than 350,000 migrants have already returned to the northern province of Henan - the centre of a recent scandal in which HIV was spread by commercial blood collectors - the Chinese media reported yesterday.

The World Health Organisation has said the fight against Sars is moving to rural China, where medical facilities may be unable to cope.

"If Sars hits HIV areas, that will decimate all the people who are HIV positive right away," said Unicef's head of Aids prevention in Beijing, Ray Yip. "Any [illness] can be exaggerated in these people. It will kill them."

Officials in Henan's Shenqiu county told Reuters yesterday that 2,000 migrant workers a day were arriving.

Beijing has the highest Sars rate in the world. A total of 2,136 cases had been reported there yesterday - 94 more than on the previous day.

Some experts believe HIV-Aids has spread to 1m of Henan province's 92m people.

Sheds have now been set up outside villages to quarantine returning migrants, one of whom has already been identified as a Sars sufferer.

China's premier Wen Jiabao said this week that the struggle against Sars was "an urgent priority for rural areas" and called for better health education and free treatment for peasants.

· The WHO has extended its Sars warning, saying travellers should "consider postponing all but essential travel" to Tianjin, north China's second-largest city; Taiwan's capital Taipei; and Inner Mongolia.