The country's 558 clinics treating drug addicts have helped 170,000 people to kick the habit in the past five years, an official has said.

The government began setting up such clinics in 2003, which provide cheap methadone to drug addicts, said Wu Zunyou, director of the National Center for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Disease Control and Prevention.

The country had just five methadone clinics in 2004.