ZHENGZHOU - The number of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Central China's Henan province, which is home to more than 100 million people, rose for the fourth consecutive year, local authorities said Saturday.

There were 3,952 new cases in the province in the first ten months of the year, up 17 percent year on year, according to a statement from the provincial health and family planning commission.

There are now 63,940 PLWHA in Henan, more than 35,000 are receiving treatment and 14 percent are receiving Chinese traditional medicine therapies, according to the statement.

Ninety-six percent of the new cases in the first ten months of this year were sexually transmitted, up more than 20 percent year on year.

Of those cases transmitted through sexual intercourse, 848 were a result of same-sex transmission, up 55 percent on the previous year, it said.

The mortality rate for the disease in Henan dropped to 2.9 percent, lower than the 2013 national average of 6.6 percent, due to effective medical treatment. The mortality rate dropped to 6.6 percent last year from 17.9 percent in 2005 according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 436,800 PLWHA in China by the end of 2013, and 136,300 had died following infection.