Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Monday November 12, 2001
Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press Writer
Health care officials are alarmed the 30 percent annual growth rate in HIV infections and want to slow it to 10 percent by 2005. AIDS experts estimate more than 600,000 Chinese were infected by HIV by the end of 2000, a figure the government does not dispute.
The unprecedented meeting, which starts Tuesday and ends Friday, will bring officials, doctors, activists and patients together for discussion on prevention and treatment, health education, and cooperation within the government. The official Xinhua News Agency called it an effort to "spur vigilance against the disease in all corners of Chinese society."
The disease has spread mostly through intravenous drug use and the flourishing sex trade in China's cities. It has also spread into the vast countryside, in part through contamination of the blood supply.
Local governments in China have long ignored the country's hundreds of thousands of AIDS victims, considering them an embarrassment. The underfunded public health system has been unable to help more than a few.
In Henan province, 620 miles south of Beijing, unscrupulous blood buyers operated for years with little regard for the health of their donors.
They bought blood from poor farmers, pooled it so they could extract the valuable plasma, and then injected what was left back into donors. That made it possible for one HIV carrier to infect dozens of people, and officials say up to 50,000 people caught the disease this way.
Villagers claim officials covered up the practice in return for a cut of the profits.
In August, Vice Health Minister Yin Dakui chided local officials for failing to recognize the dangers of AIDS and warned that China faces "a very serious epidemic" of the disease.
Activists are demanding the government help AIDS sufferers with free or subsidized treatment, legal protection against discrimination and a comprehensive survey of the extent of the illness in Henan. They also want those who allowed blood buying to spread the disease punished.
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