Uneducated: China’s young people are grossly unaware of how Aids is spread. According to a survey, many believe people can contract the disease from mosquito bites. Two-thirds of secondary school students surveyed in Beijing did not know mosquitoes were not to blame and half were unaware that proper use of condoms can reduce the risk of contracting Aids, the Beijing Xinbao newspaper said. As a result of the study Beijing’s education department has asked all secondary schools to begin teaching Aids awareness as part of the school curriculum.

Skyrocketing: HIV and Aids infection rates in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with young people comprising the majority of new cases, the United Nations Children’s Fund warned in a report released on Wednesday. Nearly 80% of newly registered infections from 1997 to 2000 in the Commonwealth of Independent States, the grouping of former Soviet republics, occurred among people under the age of 29. Unicef found that less than 70% of teenagers in Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia knew that condoms offered protection against HIV, while 97% of French teens and 87% of German teens were aware of that.