Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - November 16, 2001
Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press Writer
The meeting, which ended Friday, brought together more than 2,700 experts - medical, social, legal and educational - from 20 nations. The United Nations' top AIDS official had described it as "historic."
Participants said the conference's very existence helps the government send a signal of greater openness about a problem that officials in many Chinese regions have tried to hide. They say the attention - and the efforts it can produce - could help cut the number of AIDS and HIV cases across the country.
"People and the government are really starting to seriously attack this problem," said one conference participant, a health worker who gave only her surname, Lu. "I think it's absolutely realistic to bring down the rate of new infections."
In another hopeful sign for patients, the Chinese pharmaceutical company Desano said it expects official approval early next year to produce low-priced AIDS drugs for the Chinese market.
"It's very hopeful," said Li Jinliang, deputy manager of Shanghai-based Desano. "The government backs such production because it will benefit lots of domestic patients."
The government is calling for increased attention in the battle against AIDS, and some officials said earlier this week that the mass media must play a crucial role in education. But foreign journalists were barred from all sessions except for the opening ceremony Tuesday.
Hints of increased openness surfaced earlier this year. In August, Vice Health Minister Yin Dakui criticized local officials for failing to recognize the dangers of AIDS and warned that China faces "a very serious epidemic."
But officials in central China's Henan province have detained journalists who sought to report on AIDS among farmers there and harassed and threatened a doctor who tried to promote AIDS awareness.
The government says the number of newly reported infections jumped 67 percent in the first six months of 2001 compared to the first half of last year.
Experts estimate more than 600,000 Chinese - in a population of 1.26 billion - were infected by the end of 2000. China says it hopes to slow the increase in new infections by 10 percent annually by 2005.
AIDS has primarily spread through needle-sharing by intravenous drug users, the sex trade and unsafe blood supplies. Unscrupulous blood buyers infected thousands of donors in the countryside.
Li Jianhua, a drug abuse expert from southwestern Yunnan province, said officials there hope to slow the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, by supplying heroin addicts with the heroin substitute methadone, which is taken orally without need for needles.
Desano's drugs, which would be copies of medicines available abroad, could vastly improve the treatment of Chinese AIDS patients. Foreign AIDS drugs can cost thousands of dollars a year, well beyond the means of most Chinese. Several countries are developing generic versions or close replicas of AIDS drugs that cost only a few hundred dollars a year.
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