No anti-AIDS drugs for children are produced in China, and there are also no systematic imports of from abroad, the China Youth Daily reported.

Under the current circumstances, local hospitals have no choice but to give the children AIDS drugs meant for adults in smaller dosages, even though the practice is sometimes considered dangerous.

"China has not yet developed a special anti-AIDS drug suited for pediatric use, and even on a global scale it's a problem," said Zhao Hongxin, a doctor at Beijing's Ditan Hospital.

This echoes complaints from international aid organizations that have criticised pharmaceutical companies for devoting too few resources to the development of AIDS drugs for children, leading to similar problems in Africa.

Solving the problem is an urgent issue for China, as the health ministry estimates the number of children suffering from HIV/AIDS will rise to more than a quarter million by the end of the decade.

But the real number could actually be much higher, since AIDS orphans live scattered in the vast countyside and there is no reliable way of knowing exactly how many there are.

The official number of HIV carriers in China, children and adults, is 840,000, a figure that has been left unchanged for nearly a year.

State-run media have warned that unless China takes urgent action it could end up with 12 million HIV patients by 2010.

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