A red ribbon is the symbol for World AIDS Day Photo: VCG

The Dongcheng district's disease control and prevention center in Beijing sparked uproar for posting a video suggesting that people should not engage in homosexuality to prevent AIDS, which netizens considered discriminatory and exposed the need to disseminate accurate AIDS prevention information.     

Screenshots circulating online show the director of the center, Wang Lianjun, disseminating information about what AIDS is and how to prevent the disease in a video posted on the center's WeChat account ahead of the World AIDS Day, which falls on Sunday. 

Wang said AIDS is an infectious disease that no vaccine or drug can cure. "Don't take drugs, don't be promiscuous and don't engage in homosexuality," Wang said. 

Netizens said the video targets gay people, and implies homosexuality leads to AIDS. 

The video will mislead people about how to prevent AIDS, a net user wrote on Weibo. "They should warn against unsafe sex," another wrote.

The video has been deleted as of press time. 

Anal sex is one of main methods for gays to have sex, which "is more likely to cause scratches on mucosa, leading to an infection," said Wang Fusheng, an expert on infectious diseases at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Strict protective measures should be taken, and that there is no need to panic, he said. 

About 1.25 million people live with HIV in China by the end of 2018. Sex is a main channel of transmission. Heterosexual transmission accounted for 69.6 percent of reported infections, and homosexual transmission among males was 25.5 percent in 2017, the Xinhua News Agency reported.