By Ben Blanchard BEIJING, April 5 (Reuters) - China is not investing enough to fight HIV/AIDS and the government, while now finally taking the issue seriously, still needs to do more to stop an epidemic, a panel of experts and health workers said on Thursday. Among other problems faced in the world's most populous nation, discrimination is widespread and ignorance is hampering prevention and treatment efforts, they said. A sense that the problem is no longer considered a priority in siome circles, is another area of concern. "I think China is entering a stage of AIDS fatigue. Now some officials are questioning how much money should be invested in the field, and some scholars working on AIDS have now transfered to other fields," said Jing Jun, a professor at Tsinghua University's AIDS Policy Centre. "I don't think China is controlling the epidemic. The epidemic is still growing," he told a forum in Beijing. "The government -- (and) the international community -- is not investing enough money. There was roughly 3 billion yuan ($388 million) invested last year, which is 20 kilometres (12 miles) of expressway in Beijing," Jing added. Experts from the United Nations and the Chinese Health Ministry estimate about 650,000 people in China are living with HIV or AIDS in China, and experts say the disease is moving into the general population and spreading ever faster. Still, the prevalence is much lower than the United States and many other countries, which is an opportunity China should seize, said Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organisation's representative in Beijing. Yet though the central government has many good policies, such as methadone clinics for drug addicts and outreach programmes for stigmatised groups such as sex workers and gay men, that message is not reaching some officials, he added. "It still remains a very sensitive area in many central provinces. It that sense, it remains an unresolved issue," Bekedam said, pointing to the harassment of certain AIDS activists and non-governmental groups. HIV/AIDS became a major problem for China in the 1990s when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers became infected through botched blood-selling schemes. After initially being slow to acknowledge the threat, China has stepped up the fight against HIV/AIDS in recent years, which is now mainly being spread sexually and by intravenous drug users. Yang Xusheng of China's Red Cross said he hoped to attract not only more international funding to tackle HIV/AIDS, but also get Chinese companies and the country's growing band of millionaires and self-made people, to start donating. ($1=7.728 Yuan)
