Protesters urge AIDS action
- Source: Global Times
- [02:19 November 26 2009]
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In many villages in Henan, villagers contracted HIV after selling blood or plasma to illegal stations that reused needles and pooled blood in tubs. This was how Gao's husband became infected.
"If any donor carries the HIV virus and the blood station uses the same container to hold and pump back the contaminated blood protein to donors, the chance of other donors getting infected is 100 percent," Dr. Zhou Lihua, a professor at the AIDS research center at the Henan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, told the Global Times in an interview earlier this month.
When Gao first learned that she and her husband were sick, the first thing that crossed her mind was whether her son was OK.
"I was so relieved when I found out he was negative," Gao recalled. "I told myself that no matter how hard life got, I had to live for him."
At Tuesday's 5th Conference of International Cooperation Programs on HIV/AIDS in Shanghai, Chen said official figures as of October 31 put the total number of Chinese infected with HIV at 319,877, including 102,323 citizens diagnosed with AIDS. And the total number of people killed by the disease in China had reached 49,845.
HIV infection caused by illegal blood transfusions has become very controversial in China over the past few years. In Henan alone, the number of reported HIV carriers had reached 42,879 by the end of 2008, including 24,484 AIDS patients. About 70 percent of them, mostly farmers, were infected when selling blood or plasma, according to the China News Service.
Acknowledging the problem, officials have started responding to the public outcry. Premier Wen Jiabao, for instance, visited several AIDS-hit villages in Henan Province in November of last year.
And government funding for AIDS prevention was raised from 390 million yuan in 2003 to more than 1 billion yuan in 2009, and the central government also give another billion yuan to local governments, according to official figures.
The local government in Henan also raised monthly subsidies for orphans of AIDS victims to as much as 200 yuan per child in 2007. And for widows and widowers of AIDS victims in rural areas, the subsidy is no less than 30 yuan per month.
But Gao and other protesters said the government isn't doing enough.
