BEIJING, April 23 (AFP) - China's AIDS villages are bracing for another health crisis -- SARS, which coupled with AIDS could wipe out huge segments of the population, local and international health officials said Wednesday.
More than one million people in central China's Henan province alone are estimated to be HIV positive from selling blood to unsanitary collection stations beginning in the mid-1980s, according to non-government organisations.
Henan is worst hit but 22 other provinces, including SARS-hit Shanxi in the north, also have so-called "AIDS villages."
"If SARS hits HIV areas, that will decimate all the people who are HIV positive right away," said Ray Yip, head of AIDS prevention for the United Nations Children's Fund's China office.
"Any (illness) can be exaggerated in these people. It will kill them."
Their immune system already severely weakened by AIDS, patients could receive the final blow from the pneumonia-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
"The death rate from SARS now is four percent, but if it gets to AIDS villages, it could be at least 30 to 40 percent," said Hu Jia, executive director of the Beijing-based AIDS prevention group, Aizhixing Institute of Health Education.
Henan province has reported six cases of SARS so far and Shanxi has reported 141 cases, but even local doctors question those figures.
"It's not just (those few) cases. There are many suspected cases they're not reporting," said Wu Guofeng, a doctor at the Shangcai County People's Hospital.
Awareness of SARS and its dangers to AIDS patients appears low among villagers.
Fearful of SARS, migrant workers from Henan's AIDS villages and elsewhere in the province are beginning to return home from major cities -- possibly bringing the deadly SARS virus with them.
No one is checking them for symptoms before letting them leave the cities for the rural areas.
In Shangcai county's Wenlou village, about a dozen migrant workers returned home from SARS-hit places like Beijing, southern China's Guangzhou city and Shanxi recently, said farmer Cheng Yanzhang.
"They were scared of SARS so they came home," Cheng said. "No one checked them."
So far no SARS cases have been reported in the AIDS villages, but that does not mean there are no cases.
Zhao Zhen, a farmer in Shui county, said three people recently came back from Guangdong with SARS symptoms, but two of them are not being isolated.
"One person has been transferred to the capital Zhengzhou. The other two are staying home. They don't want to go to the hospital," Zhao said.
"Their families don't want people to know because they fear people will shun them because it's a contagious disease."
That mentality is common in a population that has suffered severe discrimination due to AIDS.
Farmers in AIDS villages are just now learning about SARS by word of mouth, Hu said.
"Many of the families have sold their TV to pay for medicine for AIDS. Forget the radio. They can no longer afford to pay for electricity," said Hu. "In Henan, the medical system is so poor and awareness of proper hygiene is so low that if one person has SARS today, a hundred could have it by next week. Some families don't even have soap to wash hands."
Local officials have been alerted to the SARS crisis and appear to be taking it seriously, Yip said.
Hospitals like the one in Shangcai county have been told to immediately isolate patients with fevers and other SARS symptoms, Wu said.
But even officials seem ill-prepared.
One of the three SARS cases in Henan is a nursing assistant who worked in a Beijing hospital treating SARS patients. She became scared by the SARS outbreak in Beijing and was allowed to go home without prior isolation, Yip said.
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