China issues AIDS alert

In an unusually frank appeal, Wen said the government needed to make fighting AIDS its top priority, and called on the Chinese public to help.

His comments came on the eve of a global conference on AIDS in the Thai capital, Bangkok.

Last week, the United Nations warned that 10 million people in China could be infected with HIV within six years.

China says it has recorded more than 800,000 cases of HIV/AIDS, but experts say the real figure could be much higher.

"These last few years, AIDS has spread very quickly over a vast area, causing serious epidemics in some parts," Wen said in the People's Daily newspaper.

"The epidemic is currently spreading from high risk groups to the population at large," he said.

Wen said AIDS had spread most rapidly in rural areas, where most people live.

The government, he said, "needs to make the protection of the health of the population its top priority".

Last December, the premier shattered a taboo when he was photographed shaking hands with an AIDS sufferer at a hospital in Beijing.