Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice-Premier Wu Yi, who also serves as the health minister, marked World AIDS Day Monday by meeting with AIDS patients at Beijing's Ditan Hospital, December 1, 2003. Wen became the first Chinese premier to shake hands with AIDS patients.

NANNING, May 16 (Xinhuanet) -- Six volunteers received inoculation with a cocktail of China's newest experimental AIDS vaccines Saturday in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, marking a new development of China's clinical research of the AIDS vaccines.

    After receiving medical check-ups in the Guangxi Disease Prevention and Control Center, the six volunteers were inoculated with the vaccines. The volunteers will receive another three injections in the coming three months, said Chen Jie, vice director of the center.

    The latest round of AIDS vaccine research was launched after a two-month observation of six groups of volunteers who received inoculation with the vaccines.

    Another group of 21 volunteers will receive inoculation in the about three months, Chen said, adding that the research report andthe statistics data of first-phase clinical practice are expected to come out by the end of this year.

    To date, a total of 34 volunteers in seven groups have been injected with the vaccines.

    The clinical research of the AIDS vaccines will be phased into three parts and the first part will last 14 months. The second part can start only after research result of the first part passesthe expert appraisal by the State Food and Drug Supervision Administration.

    With the first AIDS case reported in 1985, China now has an estimated 840,000 HIV carriers and AIDS patients, according to the central government.

    In 2004, the number of newly reported AIDS patients and people who died from the disease continued to rise. The death toll from AIDS ranked fourth among the country's infectious diseases. Enditem