Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - November 30, 2004
China's battle against the spread of HIV has been hampered by politics, with the leadership initially slow to acknowledge what it characterized as a problem of drug users and sex workers.
"During the visit to the Beijing You'an Hospital, Hu also urged the whole society to phase out discrimination and estrangement toward AIDS patients," the official Xinhua news agency reported.
A separate Xinhua report cited a Ministry of Health survey which found that nearly 60 percent of urban residents would be "nervously afraid" to have contact with HIV positive people in public, underlining the fear and ignorance surrounding the disease.
The government estimates there are 840,000 people with HIV or AIDS in China, but some experts say there may be that many alone in the central province of Henan, where a blood-selling scandal in the mid-1990s led to scores of infections.
Last year on World AIDS Day, Premier Wen Jiabao made headlines when he shook hands and chatted with AIDS patients, and Health Minister Wu Yi has since visited Henan to take stock of the crisis, underlining the government's changing attitude.
A joint assessment prepared by a U.N. team and experts from China's State Council, or cabinet, said China was making progress with actions such as promoting condoms, providing some free antiretroviral therapy and nearly doubling it budget for AIDS to 810 million yuan ($98 million) for 2004.
But the report also said China's key challenge was implementing such policies in the country's far-flung and often impoverished provinces, where local officials have a mixed track record of acting on national directives.
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