UNESCO has launched a program in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, to help improve AIDS awareness among the youth in rural areas.

A total of 3,000 youths from the Baiyun District will participate in a series of training classes on "Living Skills and Personal Health", "Prevention of AIDS", "Leaving Drugs Alone" and "Sex and Sexual Contact" under the program, "Youth Health School", jointly launched by UNESCO and the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League on Tuesday.

The training classes are scheduled to end by the end of this year and will be conducted in other parts of rural China in the future, according to sources with the provincial youth league.

According to estimates by the World Health Organization and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, China had about 650,000 HIV/AIDS carriers at the end of last year.

Experts have warned that China faces serious challenges from AIDS as the public knows very little about the disease, especially rural young people who have little access to information about health and related services.

(Xinhua News Agency July 5, 2006)