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China orders local officials to learn about AIDS
Chinese leaders ordered local officials to learn about AIDS as the government tried to show its commitment to fighting the disease.
Chinese leaders ordered local officials to learn about AIDS as the government on Wednesday tried to show its commitment to fighting the disease by broadcasting television scenes of President Hu Jintao visiting AIDS patients.
Criticized for its slow response to AIDS and for harassing health activists, the government marked World AIDS Day by publicizing efforts to slow the spread of the disease among prostitutes and intravenous drug users - the two highest-risk groups in China.
China says it has an estimated 840,000 people infected with the AIDS virus and 84,000 have the full-blown disease. The U.N. AIDS agency has warned that the country could have as many as 10 million people infected by 2010 if it doesn't take urgent action. Hu called on "leaders of various levels to enhance their HIV/AIDS knowledge," the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The central government has distributed 100,000 copies of a pamphlet meant to educate local officials about the disease in hopes that will encourage them to promote anti-AIDS work, Xinhua said. "Officials ... may have limited knowledge of disease and feel scared," Hou Peisen, director of National Health Education Institute, was quoted as saying.
"It is hoped that by educating them on related policies and dispelling their concerns the state policies can be followed and implemented locally." State television devoted the first half of its 30-minute midday newscast to showing Hu on Tuesday visiting a Beijing AIDS ward - the first time the Chinese leader has been shown meeting AIDS patients. Wearing a red AIDS awareness ribbon on his blue windbreaker, Hu was shown shaking hands and chatting with one patient, and nurses were shown singing.
The communist government has promised free testing and free treatment for the poor. But it still detains and harasses activists who campaign for better treatment.
Xinhua reported on a needle-exchange program for drug users and efforts to teach prostitutes about the disease in the southern region of Guangxi, which borders Vietnam.
But in many parts of the country, local officials are reluctant to take action for fear of acknowledging that their areas have drug use and prostitution.
A joint report released Tuesday by a U.N. agency and the Chinese Cabinet's AIDS task force warned that the virus was spreading out of such risk groups as drug users and into the general population. Official squeamishness prompted elite Peking University to cancel a plan to give out free condoms on Tuesday. School officials reportedly said doing it so openly was inappropriate. In Shanghai, universities went ahead with plans to hand out condoms on campus.
"As a form of publicity about AIDS prevention, condom distribution on campus is especially effective," said Wang Xifang, a Communist Party official at Shanghai Jiaotong University, quoted by the Shanghai Youth Daily newspaper.
In Beijing, a spokesman for the International Federation of the Red Cross, criticized the government's strategy of creating separate prison sections for inmates with the AIDS virus as "discriminatory and unnecessary."
"You don't get AIDS from sharing a glass or sitting next to someone," said Red Cross spokesman John Sparrow. "There's no more reason to isolate infected people in prisons than there is in the general population."
