BARCELONA, Spain -- A major survey published on Tuesday found alarming ignorance about AIDS among Chinese people, one in six saying they had never heard of the devastating disease that has claimed 25 million lives.

Of those who had heard of AIDS, nearly three-quarters did not know its cause and almost 90 percent did not know how it could be detected.

The results of the survey of 7,000 people, conducted by China's State Family Planning Commission in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were released at the International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, the Reuters reported.

It is the first major survey of knowledge about AIDS among Chinese people. The researchers said the findings suggested the general public in China lacked a "sense of risk of infection and an awareness of self-protection. Widespread information and education efforts are urgently needed."

Although 91 percent knew AIDS could be transmitted, 52 percent did not know it could be transmitted through a blood transfusion, 81 percent didn't know that it could be transmitted by drug users sharing needles, and 85 percent were not aware it could be passed from an infected woman to her newborn child.

Some 17 percent of those questioned had never heard of AIDS.

Although 74 percent of respondents said AIDS was preventable, 77 percent did not know it could be prevented by using condoms correctly.

The survey comes amid an increased international focus on china, where aids cases are likely to soar in coming years.

Up to 1.5 million Chinese were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, by the end of last year and the figure could grow to 10 million by 2010 without effective counter-measures, the UN AIDS agency UNAIDS warned.

"Clearly with such a huge population -- most of it lacking even basic knowledge of AIDS -- China must become a major priority in the global effort to fight HIV," Eugene McCray, director of the CDC's global AIDS programs, told a news conference in Barcelona. "When the vast majority of the population does not know how AIDS can be prevented or that women can pass HIV on to their children, aggressive HIV prevention is clearly required."

He said the question for China was how quickly and aggressively it would respond to avoid the epidemic having the tragic impact it had had in sub-Saharan Africa.

More than 7,000 randomly selected people in China, aged between 15 and 49, were interviewed in December 2000.

On Monday in Barcelona, UN officials and AIDS activists denounced widespread silence in Asia about the AIDS epidemic despite fears Asia could eventually overtake Africa as the continent hardest hit by the disease.