BEIJING, Aug 3 (AFP) - China has permitted two HIV positive people to wed for the first time since its marriage laws were amended, state press said Sunday.
Under the previous Maternal and Infantile Health Law, introduced in 1995, couples planning to marry had to pass a series of medical tests.
Those with sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis and AIDS, were barred from tieing the knot and violators would be punished, the law stated.
The Beijing Morning Post reported that Cao Xueliang, 37, and Wang Daiying, 34, had become the first couple to marry since the legislation was eased earlier this year.
The two, farmers from southwestern Sichuan province, married on Friday in front of more than 200 people, including dozens with Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus that causes AIDS.
According to the report, Cao contracted HIV 10 years ago when he went to Henan province with Wang's then-husband to sell their blood.
Hundreds of thousands of people were infected during a government-sanctioned, but unsanitary blood-collection program in central China in the 1980s and 1990s.
Wang's husband died, along with 25 other people from the town where they live, Gongmin. More than 60 people are currently HIV positive.
An AIDS activist at the ceremony said the law was relaxed after China realised that by allowing them to marry "they can encourage each other to fight against the disease".
"This will help relieve discrimination against HIV positive people," he was quoted as saying.
There are more than one million Chinese officially diagnosed with HIV, although the United Nations has suggested the real number is closer to 1.5 million and could soar to more than 10 million by the end of the decade.
Medical institutions able to provide AIDS-related care are scarce and concentrated in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
More than 70 percent of HIV/AIDS patients live in rural areas.
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