BEIJING, Mar. 18 (Xinhuanet) --  Shenzhen will set up the country's first homosexual special outpatient department this year.

    Cheng Jinquan, president of Shenzhen Municipal Hospital of Epidemic Diseases, said the new special outpatient department is aimed to help prevent sexual transmission diseases (STD) and AIDS from spreading in the southern metropolis, through offering special medical service to the city's growing number homosexuals.

    Shenzhen which borders Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is now estimated to have about 100,000 homosexuals,tops the Chinese mainland.

    And the figure is still gaining momentum.

    "If everything goes smoothly, the new outpatient department will soon be able to begin service," Cheng said Wednesday.

    Senior medical experts and doctors from abroad, mainly from Britain, will be invited to work in the outpatient department, which will be set up in Cheng's hospital,the physician said.

    The hospital is now undergoing a Sino-foreign medical project with British Royal Hospital in preventing and treating dermatosis and STD in Shenzhen.

    The project, Sino-Britain Service Centre of STD and Dermatosis, officially began service on Tuesday.

    In addition to offering medical service to local outpatients, the British experts and doctors will also give lectures and exchange views on preventing and treating STDs and dermatosis with local counterparts.

    "AIDS and STD are actually threatening Shenzhen and even the whole of Guangdong Province," Cheng said.

    Guangdong has been estimated to have more than 30,000 AIDS patients and virus carriers by the end of last year.

    Guangdong now comes the fourth in detected AIDS patients and its virus carriers in the country, following Yunnan Province in Southwest China, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

    And last year alone, a total of 191 people were detected to be AIDS patients, Cheng said.

    And in medical examinations for 120,000 pregnant women in Shenzhen last year, 550 of them were diagnosed to have contracted syphilis, Cheng added.

    (China Daily)