China, criticized for a slow initial response to its AIDS/HIV crisis, has begun its first human trials of a new AIDS vaccine, Xinhua news agency said.A 20-year-old man became the first volunteer to receive the AIDS vaccine on Saturday, followed by seven others, four of them women, Xinhua said.Some 49 volunteers aged between 18 and 50 would receive the tests in three phases, the first lasting 14 months.Experts have faulted China for being slow to recognize a growing AIDS problem, exacerbated by the cover-up of the blood-selling schemes in the central province of Henan that infected scores of people in the mid-1990s.The government estimates that China, with a 1.3 billion population, has 840,000 people with HIV. Activists and experts say a more accurate figure would be between 1 million and 1.5 million.
