Ground was broken yesterday on a new bicycle and pedestrian path that will encircle Dianchi Lake and will be off limits to motorized vehicles, according to Kunming media reports.

The so-called "Dianchi Landscape Path" (环滇池景观道) will be a total of 75.75 kilometers (47 miles) long. In addition to offering views of the heavily polluted, occasionally miasmatic but generally scenic Dianchi Lake, the path will also be accompanied by a landscaped green belt. It is scheduled for completion within two years.

The path's construction comes at a time when fewer Kunming residents are riding bicycles and more are driving their own cars or riding electric bicycles. Not so long ago, a two-day bicycle ride around the lake on the roads encircling Dianchi Lake was a popular weekend getaway for university students to get some exercise, or more often, for young lovers to escape from the lack of privacy of dorm life.

Today, local media often refers to Kunming as Ducheng (堵城), loosely meaning "Congestion City", as cars have taken over the city. Car ownership rates are climbing quickly and at last count more than 560 motorized vehicles were being registered in the city each day.

With most of the city's road resources being mobilized to deal with more and more cars, the Dianchi Landscape Path is a rare investment in Kunming's cycling and pedestrian infrastructure.

Not surprisingly, the path's construction is the lesser half of the 8.8 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) "Two Rings" construction project that also includes renovation of Huanhu Lu (环湖路), the road that encircles Dianchi Lake, which will be constructed into an eight-lane highway.

Image: ncic.ac.cn

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A recent study focusing on the spread of HIV in Yunnan has revealed significant shifts in which demographics are at higher risk for becoming infected with the virus that causes AIDS, according to a Tsinghua University study cited in a Bloomberg report.

According to the study, which was authored by Zhang Linqi, executive director and professor at Tsinghua's Comprehensive AIDS Research Center in Beijing, HIV infections spread via heterosexual contact accounted for 38 percent of all cases in 2006 in Yunnan.

Intravenous drug use, which had accounted for all of Yunnan's infections in 1989, dropped to 40 percent in 2006. Intravenous drug use was how HIV first entered and spread throughout Yunnan, which is located just north of the Golden Triangle. As of 2006, Yunnan had 48,951 HIV cases and 3,935 AIDS patients.

In general, intravenous drug users are being surpassed by women and homosexual men as the fastest-growing gender demographics, while in ethnic and socioeconomic terms urbanized Han Chinese are overtaking rural minorities

"HIV/AIDS is spreading beyond the high-risk populations," Zhang told Bloomberg, "It is the responsibility of every citizen to help control the further spread. More needs to be done in a much bigger and more effective manner."

The study focused on 3.2 million blood samples taken in Yunnan between 1989 and 2006. It found that between 1996 and 2006, the proportion of Yunnan HIV cases that were women rose from 7.1 percent to 35 percent. In 1996 the gender ratio for HIV infections was one woman to every 13 men, by 2006 that ratio had changed to 1:1.9.

In addition to gender pattern shifts, ethnic trends have also changed. Between 1989 and 1995, the Dai and Jingpo ethnic minorities in rural southern Yunnan were most at-risk for HIV infection – today the Han ethnic majority accounts for 60 percent of Yunnan's HIV cases.

"The high percentage of infected are now due to sexual contact," Bloomberg cited Zhang as saying. "It has begun to move from farmer, minority groups in rural areas into worker, Han-majority urban settings."

The study's researchers concluded that although less than one percent of China's population is HIV-positive, resolute action must be taken to address China's HIV/AIDS situation before it makes further headway into the general population. The study called for expansion of social programs targeting HIV as well as free medical treatment for the infected.

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Local media is reporting that at least 14 infants in Kunming have developed kidney stones due to consumption of San Lu Milk Powder which has been recently found to contain the toxic substance melamine, which is used in tanning and the production of plastic and pesticides.

Three infants have died and more than 6,000 have fallen ill nationwide this month because of melamine-tainted milk powder, in a scandal that has led to a recall of 69 infant formula products produced by 22 different companies as well as considerable public outrage.

Melamine, which can make protein levels in foods appear higher than they actually are, has also been found in a yogurt bar made by Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group.

The discovery of melamine in the yogurt bars has increased concerns that melamine may be present in many more dairy products around China.

Suffering from PR fallout that echoes the massive recall of pet food produced in China which had been found to contain melamine, the central government has ordered "comprehensive nationwide tests for melamine on every dairy product by every producer", according to a China Daily report.

Sadly, this is not the first incident in which toxic infant formula has killed Chinese babies. Several babies in Anhui province died from consuming fake milk powder in 2004.

Image: clzg.cn

Tags: Anhui, business, CSR, food safety, health, Inner Mongolia, milk powder scandal, San Lu milk powder

Hongyun Group and Honghe Group, two of Yunnan province's largest tobacco companies intend to merge, a move that will form China's largest and the world's fourth-largest cigarette producer by volume, according to Chinese media reports.

The planned merger, which is still awaiting regulatory approval, suggests a move towards consolidation in China's highly fragmented tobacco industry. China is the world's largest producer and consumer of cigarettes, with a market of more than 300 million smokers, a market that is still growing.

If the merger goes through, the new company is expected to be the world's fourth-largest cigarette producer after Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco Inc.

Yet in terms of revenue, the two companies' combined 2007 revenues are less than 30 percent of the revenue of current number four Imperial Tobacco Plc, partially because cigarettes in China are some of the cheapest in the world. According to their websites, in 2007 Hongyun Group posted 29 billion yuan (US$4.2 billion) in revenue and Honghe took 16 billion yuan.

The proposed company would be named Hongyun Honghe Tobacco Group Company Limited (红云红河烟草集团有限责任公司) and would have production facilities in Kunming, Qujing, Honghe, Zhaotong, Huize in Yunnan province, plus facilities in Xinjiang.

After the merger, the company would produce several of China's larger cigarette brands, including Yunyan, Honghe, Hongshancha, Shilin and Lesser Panda.

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Tags: business, health, Honghe, Honghe Group, Hongshancha, Hongyun Group, Lesser Panda, Shilin, tobacco, Yunyan

British medical journal The Lancet has published a follow-up report in this week's issue about a man from Yunnan who successfully underwent facial transplant surgery in 2006, raising hopes that the difficult surgery will be more viable in the future. The man is the second person ever to have received a successful face transplant.

Farmer Li Guoxing of Yunnan's Lanping County was attacked by a bear in October 2004, resulting in major tissue damage on the right side of his face. Li reportedly had beat the bear with a stick after discovering it eating one of his sheep, leading to the bear disfiguring his face.

Li, a member of the Lisu ethnic minority who could not speak standard Chinese, lost his job due to his appearance and became a recluse. It was through the efforts of US-based non-governmental organization The Nature Conservancy, which has operations in nearby Lijiang involving bear protection, that led to finding a suitable hospital for the operation he needed to re-enter society.

In an operation 18 months after his accident, the man underwent allograft tissue transplantation at Xijing Hospital and Fourth Military Medical University in the north Chinese city of Xi'an. He received an upper lip, nose, skin, muscle and even some facial bone from a 25-year-old donor who had died in a traffic accident.

The man reportedly underwent treatments with four different drugs to modulate his immune system and minimize the risk that his body would reject the donated tissue. He was also given drugs to prevent infection.

Researchers in the Lancet hailed the transplant and treatment as a positive step forward for face transplant surgery, but emphasized the trickiness of such an operation.

"Facial transplantation could be successful in the short term, but the procedure is not without complications," the researchers wrote.

The Lancet report also reported another facial transplant after the Chinese man's, in which a French man with a massive facial tumor successfully received a new face in January 2007.

The two successful facial transplants follow the world's first face transplant, which took place in France in 2005. The recipient, Isabel Dinoire, had been attacked by a pet dog.

For more information about the transplants, The Lancet has produced a podcast on the subject.

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The Yunnan Provincial Hygiene Department announced that as of noon on Monday, 113 cases of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) had been diagnosed in Yunnan, apparently caused by intestinal virus Enterovirus 71 (EV71). The announcement comes one day after Kunming announced that all Kindergarten students would be checked for the disease.

59 of the reported cases, more than half of the provincial total, were diagnosed in Kunming. Other affected areas include Chuxiong (19 cases), Yuxi (13), Baoshan (12), Dali (5), Honghe (3) and Zhaotong and Lincang, which reported one case each. No deaths have been reported.

Although highly contagious among children, HFMD has a low fatality rate and is expected to be contained well before the Olympics. With SARS still in people's minds and the Olympics around the corner, the Chinese government has shown a greater degree of openness and transparency at both the central and local levels than with previous outbreaks.

As Jeremy Goldkorn at Danwei puts it:

"Despite foreign cable news reports screaming about a 'deadly' virus, the virus is treatable and not that deadly. On the other hand, Xinhua and CCTV have not shied away from reporting about the disease, a welcome change from the days of SARS in 2003, when a disease outbreak was treated as something to be ashamed of and covered up."

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Kunming media is reporting that beginning today, all Kindergarteners in the city will be checked each morning for signs of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). The precautionary measure is being taken as the number of HFMD cases in the eastern province of Anhui climbed to 5,151 over the weekend.

The HFMD outbreak, caused by the intestinal virus Enterovirus 71, has infected children in the provinces of Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Guangdong, with 22 fatalities reported in Anhui and three in Guangdong.

No cases of HFMD have been reported in Yunnan or its neighboring regions of Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan or Tibet.

HFMD is a common and highly contagious disease that generally affects infants and children, with outbreaks typically taking place in nursery schools or Kindergartens. Symptoms include fever, blisters or ulcers around the mouth and rashes on the hands or feet. No vaccine is currently available. HFMD is unrelated to foot-and-mouth disease, which affects livestock.

According to Xinhua, the central government has formed an HFMD task force that will focus on containing the disease's spread.

Tags: Anhui, EV71, health, HFMD

Important news for dog owners living in China: last week the national health and agriculture ministries issued new regulations mandating that all dogs be vaccinated against rabies. Owners failing to do so risk "serious punishment".

Rabies deaths among humans in China have been increasing over the last three years, with 3,380 people falling to the disease last year, according to Ministry of Health statistics.

Rabies vaccinations will not only prevent human deaths, but will likely decrease the chances of mass cullings of dogs, as happened in the county of Mouding, Yunnan in late 2006.

Three Mouding area residents – including a four-year-old girl – died from rabies after being bitten by dogs, after which the local government and vigilante residents killed 50,000 dogs throughout the county in one week.

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