The AIDS virus in cross-section.

Not all orphanage kids are abandoned. AIDS in China is becoming a crisis.

They say the movement of the disease is starting to look less like the way it moves in America, and more like the way it moves in Africa. In other words, the high-risk group is everyone and high-risk behavior is, well, stuff you wouldn't expect.

"There are 190 new HIV infections every day ... and one percent of all pregnant women in China are infected," said Hao Yang, deputy director general of the bureau of diseases prevention and control at the Ministry of Health.

"That is a very high percentage. It is a generalised epidemic," he told Reuters in an interview.

"We're now like Africa. Last year, we found that 48 percent of those who were newly infected contracted the disease from sex, so it's not a disease that afflicts only high-risk groups."

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HIV/AIDS became a major headache for China in the 1980s and 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers became infected through botched blood-selling schemes.

Although this practice has since been stopped, it has left behind some 75,000 orphans, some of whom are infected. Those who aren't will probably live under a long, dark shadow of stigma for the rest of their lives.

I mean, you know it's bad when Yao Ming is taking kids to the Olympics and ex-presidents are showing up with cameramen.

You can read more about the history of the epidemic here. Or rather three epidemics, the way they divide them.

There's already a charity in place dedicated to China's AIDS orphans. I know nothing about it other than if you put "China AIDS orphans" in Google, it's the top return.

But it seems to be on the up-and-up. They're affiliated with The Minneapolis Foundation (which makes noise about improving accountability in charities) and Give2Asia.

The China AIDS Orphan Fund is focused on Henan, where they say the problem is at its worst. Check out this from their front page:

By some conservative estimates, more than one million people have contracted the HIV virus in Henan. Almost all of these individuals contracted the virus while donating blood for money to improve their standard of living in the early 1990's. In the period of a decade, the virus has spread with ferocious efficiency, and with devastating social and economic consequences. In some of the hardest hit villages, more than 40% of the adult population has contracted the virus. As adults succumb slowly to the disease, their children often must shoulder responsibility for their care and that of younger siblings.