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
Lindsay Beck

China, criticized for its slow initial response to HIV/AIDS, put on a public display of commitment to fighting a disease which the United Nations fears could infect 10 million Chinese by 2010.

In the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, sex workers got AIDS day off to an early start by tying red ribbons to the uniforms of policemen on Tuesday to spread awareness.

China's battle against the spread of HIV had been hampered by politics, but on Tuesday, President Hu Jintao shook hands with an AIDS patient and Premier Wen Jiabao called for "unremitting efforts" against the epidemic.

A picture of Hu wearing a red silk ribbon on his chest as he met the patient at a Beijing hospital was splashed on the front pages of major newspapers. He was accompanied by Vice Premier Wu Yi and Beijing's Communist Party boss Liu Qi.

"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.

Across the world, activists and governments were due to mark the day with events drawing attention to the disease and promoting its eradication.

Wen said China had made "remarkable progress" in HIV/AIDS prevention and control, but acknowledged that the country "still faces a stark situation in this field," according to Xinhua.

He urged governments at all levels to give priority to the issue by "utilizing all sorts of resources and conscientiously implementing all prevention and control policies and measures."

Local Chinese officials have a mixed track record of acting on national directives.

PRAISE FOR CHINA

China is ranked alongside India and Russia as countries outside Africa which are most at risk from AIDS.

Khalid Malik, resident representative of the U.N. Development Program in Beijing, praised Chinese leaders on Wednesday for their new-found zeal.

"With Chinese top leaders' strong commitment, laws and regulations have been revised, free treatment is being provided to AIDS patients in poverty and in rural areas and overall awareness of AIDS is being raised through health education," Malik said in a statement to be delivered later.

"This year's World AIDS Day is an occasion to recognize the burden that women and girls bear in the age of HIV/AIDs but equally to celebrate their achievements in the fight against the epidemic," he quoted U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as saying.

Antonio Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said: "The world can no longer afford to ignore the enormity of the HIV epidemic.

"The time has come to strike back at a killer that is transmitted by drug use and sex, as well as by ignorance and denial," he said in Beijing.

China estimates it has 840,000 people with HIV or AIDS, 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 thousands of infections.

In India's Ahmedabad, members of voluntary groups working among AIDS patients planned to tie ribbons made by HIV-positive women to people to spread awareness against the deadly disease.

"Women will be at the center of campaign this year. If they are educated and prevented from contracting the diseases, it minimizes the risk in a family," said Laxman Malodia, an anti-AIDS activist.

India has over 5.1 million people infected with HIV, the second-largest number after South Africa.

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 anti-retroviral 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.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Kutty Abraham in AHMEDABAD and Kamil Zaheer in NEW DELHI)

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