Squatting in the home of their village doctor as fellow villagers stare and whisper outside, the two women in their late 30s lament the fact that neighbors no longer come by to chat. No one helps their husbands farm the fields.

"We met at the village clinic. If she's feeling sick I go to her home to help cook meals and take care of her kids. If I'm sick, she does the same for me," Cheng said.

"In the countryside, people don't want to admit they have AIDS because it's shameful."

Feng, looking despondent, agreed: "As soon as I sit down in a noodle restaurant, everyone flees."

Like many poor farmers in central China, the two women from the corn-growing village in Henan province contracted HIV when they sold their blood through a government-approved but disastrously faulty scheme in the mid-1980s to 1990s.

At least the women now receive free anti-retroviral drugs from the government, which has come about as part of a general improvement in efforts by China's central authorities to tackle the nation's HIV and AIDS problem.

The government has been praised by the World Health Organization and others for its greater transparency, significantly increased funding for AIDS patients and prevention and efforts to combat the social stigma of the disease.

But experts say there are still a lot of shortcomings.

Ostracism and discrimination remains strong, forcing people to hide their disease.

Some people, such as Cheng's husband, refuse to get tested even though he also sold blood. Others in Cheng's village lie on their death bed but won't admit they have the disease.

Although China's official prevalence rate is still less than 0.1 percent -- compared with a rate of 0.9 percent in India -- new infections are rising rapidly, with 70,000 new cases last year, according to official figures.

At the current rate, the government expects one million cases by 2010, up from 650,000 at the end of 2005.

International experts believe much more needs to be done -- and urgently -- to stop the epidemic from exploding.

"It's not a good situation because it's very clear the trend is increasing," said Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn, the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDS team leader in China.

Intravenous drug users have been the main victims, but the disease threatens to spread to the general population due to rampant prostitution and little knowledge about safe sex.

Half of the 70,000 new cases last year were from sexual transmissions.

WHO and UNAIDS officials have said China must expand free testing for marginalized groups, needle exchange programs and condom promotion, as well as step up awareness campaigns.

But services, such as providing free testing, are moving too slowly.

Some patients who contracted HIV after getting blood transfusions at hospitals a few years ago are only now learning they have AIDS, after they had already spread it to their spouses and newborns.

"Many people haven't been tested. It's a big problem," said Wan Yanhai, head of the Beijing AIZHIXING Institute of Health Education, an AIDS NGO.

"The government is afraid if a lot of people are tested and find out they have AIDS, they'll demand compensation."

Another major problem is that three years after China first began providing anti-retroviral drugs to AIDS sufferers, the number of people on the program and the type of medication offered remains limited.

The program doesn't cover drugs for diseases arising from AIDS -- including liver problems -- nor does it provide child medication.

"If we don't get a wider variety of drugs and child treatment, the deaths will definitely go up," said Han Zhiwei, a doctor at Qulou village where many farmers also have AIDS from the blood-selling scandal.

"I have several kids in the village with AIDS, but I can only give one of them the adult medicine because he's the only one strong enough to handle it. What do I do for the others?"

Inadequate monitoring and counseling for patients on medication has also led to a low compliance rate in some areas, which threatens to breed drug resistance, Rojanapithayakorn said.

AIDS activists, meanwhile, still hear of recent infections from blood transfusions at hospitals, even though the government has said it has cleaned up the blood supply.

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