The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed $50 million to help fight HIV in China, where the number of people living with the AIDS-causing virus is growing by about 100 a day.The foundation, co-led by billionaire Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp.’s chairman, will donate $20 million to China’s Health Ministry and $30 million for use as grants to local, national and international non-governmental organizations, the Seattle-based group said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The funding will increase access to HIV prevention programs targeting those most vulnerable to infection, including injection drug users, sex workers, and men who have sex with men, it said.

“By rapidly expanding access to effective HIV prevention, China has an opportunity to prevent a widespread HIV/AIDS epidemic,” Tachi Yamada, president of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program, said in the statement.

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