Beijing ? BThe government claimed dramatic progress Tuesday in a five-year program to immunize children against hepatitis B, a disease that infects nearly 10 percent of China’s population and illustrates the daunting task of providing health services to the vast rural areas where the majority of its 1.3 billion people live.

About 11.1 million children in the poorest part of the country have received vaccinations since 2002 in a project funded by the Chinese government and the Geneva-based GAVI Alliance, a global partnership that counts among its sponsors the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The campaign focuses on 22 rural provinces, mostly in western China, where about 5.5 million babies are born each year, a third of China’s total. Organizers estimated that so far it has helped save about 200,000 lives in a country where thousands die every year of hepatitis-related ailments such as cirrhosis and liver cancer.

An estimated 120 million Chinese are infected with the disease, about a third of the world’s cases. Almost a million new cases were reported last year in China. Those who live with the disease frequently face discrimination. Many Chinese employers and universities refuse to accept anyone who tests positive for the virus.

The hepatitis problem is another reflection of the vast developmental gap between China’s rural and urban areas. Public awareness of the disease, which is spread through the exchange of bodily fluids, is not as high as it is for HIV/AIDS. In many rural areas, doctors have reused syringes and unknowingly spread the disease, particularly among children. Hepatitis B also can be spread from mother to child.

The current campaign aims to completely end the practice of reusing needles.

A vaccination within the first 24 hours after birth is considered the best way to prevent the disease. But it wasn’t until 1992 that China included it as part of a routine immunization program. Even then, the price was relatively high compared with other post-natal vaccinations, and families had to pay out of their own pockets. Many, especially in the poor countryside, decided to go without.

Only since last year did the government pass a regulation making the vaccination free of charge, according to the Health Ministry.

The government has set a goal of reducing the overall hepatitis B infection rate to less than 7 percent over the next five years, and the rate of infection for children younger than 5 to less than 1 percent.

Julian Lob-Levyt, executive secretary of the GAVI Alliance, said the program is a model for other developing countries.