In
an August 23rd news conference in Bejing, Deputy Health Minister
Yin Dakui spoke about the AIDS crises confronting the world’s most populous
nation and the need for more urgent governmental action to confront the epidemic. “Like many other countries we are also facing a very serious
epidemic of HIV-AIDS,”, Mr Yin said, add that the government had “not effectively
stemmed the epidemic”. Mr Yin’s
90-minute news conference was the first by a top Chinese official on the topic.
The
Deputy Health Minister insisted that China’s HIV epidemic was still relatively
small, reporting previous ministry estimates that 600,000 Chinese were infected
with the virus by the end of 2000. He
repeated the government’s goal that China should contain the total number of
HIV cases to less than 1.5 million in 2010.
But a recent United Nations report estimated that already “above one
million” Chinese had HIV and with current trends there could be 20 million by
the end of 2010.
Yet,
Mr Yin acknowledged that the rate
of HIV infections rose 67.4 percent in the first six months of 2001 compared
with the same period last year. He
also reported that about 5 percent of drug users in China are now infected with
HIV, up from 0.5 percent in 1995. Perhaps
more importantly, Mr. Yin addressed some of the politically sensitive aspects
of the AIDS problem, stating that “in some regions, leaders and the general
public have not fully realized the hidden dangers of a large-scale epidemic”.
He
also discussed, for the first time, an AIDS epidemic covered up in Henan Province,
where tens of thousands of poor farmers have contracted AIDS by selling their
blood at blood stations that had used unsterilized needles and unsanitary practices.
In
2001, he reported that the government will spend
$12 million annually (compared with $744 million by the US Centers for
Disease Contorl) for AIDS prevention and control as well as more than $117 this
year to improve blood safety.
At the news conference, Mr Yin also addressed the government’s plans
for AIDS education, confessing that official efforts had so far failed in many
respects. “We still have a poor
record of education on how to prevent HIV”.
Some
outside the government, including physicians, have also taken the responsibility
to educate the public about HIV prevention, such as Dr. Gao Yaojie, a retired
gynecologist who earned international praise and the opposition of local officials
by creating her own HIV education program in Henan Province.
“Education is extremely important especially at the grass-roots level,”
said Dr. Gao. She has been deluged
with requests for one of the 120,000 copies of a HIV education and prevention
book she published in part with the proceeds from the Jonathan Mann Award, a
prestigious international public health prize, with which she was honored this
year. Local officials blocked her
from traveling to Washington to accept it from United Nations Secretary General
Kofi Annan. “Of course, education
should be the government’s job,”, she said, “There’s so much to be done”.