ZHENGZHOU, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- China reported 18,543 new cases of HIV carriers and 4,314 cases of full-blown AIDS in the first half of this year.

Two thousand and thirty-nine peopled died of the disease in the first six months of the year, said Han Mengjie, assistant to the director of the office with AIDS Control Work Committee of the State Council.

By late July, the accumulated number of AIDS/HIV patients in China totaled 214,300, of which people with full-blown symptoms of the disease numbered 56,758, and 18,246 had died of the killer disease, Han said at a recent symposium sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the office with AIDS Control Work Committee of the State Council, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and Henan Provincial Government in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province.

Han cited drug abuse as the major form of newly reported HIV infections across the country, and warned that the virus was seemingly spreading from high-risk groups to the general public because of other factors such as unsafe sex and migration of those people already infected with the virus.