CHINAHOY

HOME

2013-December-16

Anti-AIDS Action Accelerates

After undergoing a course of anti-retroviral drugs, and with the help of an AIDS relief organization, Wang opened a small farm machinery workshop that sells farm machinery parts and does repairs. A few years later, he bought a car and became a self-employed taxi driver. Consequently his living standards have significantly improved. In 2011, Wang Mengcai was elected the head of his village.

The government stipulates in the AIDS Prevention and Control Regulations that the law protects the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and their family members to marry, work, and receive education and healthcare. But people are still generally unwilling to come into close contact with AIDS patients. When giving interviews, Wang Mengcai is open about his condition as a person living with AIDS, but nonetheless requested this journalist not to mention the name of his hometown.

To dispel discrimination against people living with AIDS, on the day prior to the World AIDS Day in 2012, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, visited a group of people living with HIV/AIDS in a community clinic in Beijing. He said that AIDS is less terrible in itself than the ignorance about HIV/AIDS that spawns prejudice against those infected. He concluded by saying that people living with HIV/AIDS are fellow human beings that deserve all the love, compassion and respect that society can muster.

Wu Zunyou pinpointed the challenges that China faces in AIDS prevention and control. Besides the shortages of professional healthcare specialists, constraints wrought by preconceived ideas about AIDS, and the enormous risks that China’s floating population poses, he cited prejudice as the biggest obstacle. It is prejudice and discrimination that makes people living with HIV/AIDS and those at high risk reluctant to make use of the testing and early treatment programs that the government has set up.

The Chinese government aims to reduce new cases of AIDS by 25 percent as compared to those in 2010, and to reduce AIDS deaths by 30 percent. This means the number of people in China living with HIV/AIDS will fall to 1.2 million by the end of 2015. Wu Zunyou believes that, with the joint efforts of government and all sectors of society, most of the existent challenges can be overcome.

      1   2   3