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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| China becoming "like Africa" with AIDS scourge |
| 2006-10-17 |
| AIDS in China has spread beyond high risk groups such as injecting drug users, prostitutes and homosexuals and the country is becoming "like Africa" in how the virus is transmitted, a senior health official says. "There are 190 new HIV infections every day ... and one percent of all pregnant women in China are infected," said Hao Yang, deputy director general of the bureau of diseases prevention and control at the Ministry of Health. "That is a very high percentage. It is a generalized epidemic," he told Reuters in an interview. "We're now like Africa. Last year, we found that 48 percent of those who were newly infected contracted the disease from sex, so it's not a disease that afflicts only high-risk groups." Africa has the world's highest number of HIV/AIDS sufferers and the virus is spread mostly through heterosexual sex. To combat the problem, it is now mandatory for all entertainment spots in China to make condoms available and methadone clinics have mushroomed all over the country to help drug addicts kick the habit. Hao said for China's 650,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, first-line drugs had managed to prolong lives but some sufferers were beginning to develop resistance -- partly because they are unaware of the importance of keeping to strict drug regimens. The HIV virus mutates rapidly and patients who fail to take antiretroviral drugs in the right amounts or at the right time will soon develop resistance -- something that is happening all- too-frequently in China, activists say. "So many patients are just taking the drugs haphazardly. Doctors have to spend time to explain to patients how crucial it is to keep to the regimens if they want to preserve their lives," said Meng Lin, an AIDS activist in Beijing. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #7 China must denied a single penny of foreign aid in the battle against this epidemic. Their piratical economy must be penalized for its unfair practices and be made to bear the entire burden of this self-inflicted wound. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-10-17 23:56 |
| #6 Really bad news, Wan Yanhai, one of the few AIDS activists has dissappeared. http://www.hrichina.org/public/contents/article?revision%5fid=3640&item%5fid=3639 Wan, 38, disappeared on August 24, 2002, after leaving a Beijing café that was showing a gay and lesbian film screening. Wan’s colleague at the Aizhi Action Project, Liang Yan, was informed on September 4 by an official from the Ministry of State Security, that Wan was under investigation for leaking “state secrets.” Wan had posted on the Aizhi Web site an internal (neibu) document issued by the Henan Province Department of Health that showed that the local government had known since 1995 that HIV was spreading through the widespread practice of blood selling. Despite the efforts of the local government to suppress the information, Wan’s group had been instrumental in exposing the plight of poor farmers in Henan infected with HIV and AIDS through selling their blood to collection stations that were often run by government agencies. He was one of the first to expose (and be jailed for that act) THE WORLD'S LARGEST MEDICALLY CAUSED AIDS CRISIS IN ALL HISTORY. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-10-17 23:53 |
| #5 These are the chickens of Henan province coming home to roost. In the mid to late 1990s "bloodheads" were allowed to buy plasma. The leftover red blood cells (after centrifuging) were divided and reinjected back into the donors (many of whom could barely sustain any sort of donation). HIV/AIDS spread like wildfire while government collusion saw stalling and inaction that permitted many of the infected to migrate into the large urban centers. Combine this with the conspicuous lack of females resulting from China's longstanding "one family - one child" policy and rising rates of homosexuality are sure to spread this epidemic even wider. This is all part of a series of human, environmental and financial catastrophes that are hovering over China's emergence upon the global stage. Nearly all of these problems can be laid specifically at the feet of communism and the politburo's cronieism. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-10-17 23:50 |
| #4 AIDS/HIV, pervasive and worsening desertification, enviro pollution, illegal mining. |
| Posted by: Joluling Cravimp8492 2006-10-17 23:22 |
| #3 open sores on the penis are common? Yuck! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-10-17 19:16 |
| #2 I doubt China's AIDS growth rate will ever match Africa's for one reason. In Africa, other venereal diseases are so commonplace that it is ordinary for males to have open sores on their penis. This makes for very easy transmittal of HIV *to* males as well as females. Without such sores, most sexual transmission is one way, from males to females, which acts as a strong limiting factor. Even rural Chinese are very conscious about open sores and will at least make some effort to get them treated. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-10-17 19:05 |
| #1 Paging Dr. White, Paging Dr. White. Is this telling us something about China or AIDS? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-10-17 18:16 |