A UN fund has awarded China $21 million over two years to treat peasants infected by HIV through blood-selling schemes, the US health chief said yesterday. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson, who also chairs the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, added the fund could provide China about $90 million over the next five years.

Beijing has faced widespread condemnation for disguising the scale of the AIDS epidemic, neglecting to treat patients properly and arresting activists. Rights groups and experts have warned the Global Fund will not be able to ensure the aid is well-spent.

But Thompson, in Beijing ahead of the opening of a Global AIDS Programme office, said he hoped the arrival of funding and US health personnel would spur top leaders to confront the disease head-on. ?I would like to see the highest echelons of the Chinese government talk more about prevention of HIV/AIDS and containment,? Thompson told reporters.

US CDC director Julie Gerberding was to open the Global AIDS Programme office today and Thompson?s department planned to appoint a full-time attaché at the Beijing embassy by January, he said. ?All of these things portend that there will be more activity in this fight against AIDS here in China, which is absolutely necessary,? Thompson said.

China says about one million people have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. But some activists estimate one million people were infected in central Henan province alone by blood-selling schemes run by state-sponsored clinics. The clinics paid farmers to extract their blood plasma, then pumped the unused components back into the donor from a pool tainted with the blood from other people. They say similar practices also infected masses of people in six surrounding provinces. China applied for $98 million from the Global Fund in part to address a dearth of trained personnel, foreign aid workers say.