Beijing - Women should be recruited as an active force in the fight against HIV/AIDS, a campaign that has previously addressed them almost exclusively as carriers of the virus, according to study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released on Monday.

Funded by UNAIDS, researchers interviewed more than 1,000 HIV-positive women in 13 provinces either in person or by questionnaire to study its impact on female sufferers, said Bu Wei, a professor at the academy who led the study.

China's policies "focus largely on pregnant women and prostitutes for intervention and prevention services," she said.