China-UK program prevents AIDS in southwest China

A Sino-British AIDS prevention program has treated at least 4,500 AIDS patients and people with HIV and it has helped prevent nearly 130,000 people from contracting the disease in southwest China.

The six-year program, which ended Tuesday, offered training and protective devices to people susceptible to AIDS, including drug addicts and sex workers, in the provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan.

About 1.28 million disposable syringes were given out under the 19.9-million-pound program, and 1.14 million used needles were collected for safe disposal to prevent the spread of AIDS among intravenous drug users.

The program has involved government agencies, non-governmental organizations as well as communities in protecting the high-risk group from HIV infection and AIDS, said Ole Hansen, an official at UNAIDS China Office.

Hansen said the program's success in China will provide valuable help to other countries in their AIDS prevention work at grassroots and community levels.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the British Department for International Development set up the AIDS prevention and treatment cooperation program in 2000. It was carried out in 83 counties in 37 cities across Sichuan and Yunnan.

The Sino-British program provided medication and counseling to 4,531 AIDS patients and HIV carriers in the two provinces, says Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Thanks to its intervention, about 80 percent of the intravenous drug users in Sichuan Province and 86 percent of those in Yunnan no longer share syringes. Half of them were sharing in 2002, according to figures provided by the center.

Volunteers of the program have also taught sex workers to use condoms to protect themselves from AIDS and other venereal diseases. Seventy percent of the female sex workers in Yunnan Province and 53 percent of those in Sichuan have followed the advice of the volunteers, the center said.

The program also helped dispel fear and discrimination of AIDS patients and HIV carriers in Zizhong, a hinterland county of 1.32 million people in Sichuan.

Altogether 109 people in Zizhong were infected after selling blood to illegal dealers in 1995. The locals, ignorant of how the disease might spread, avoided going anywhere near people who were infected.

"Young men in the village would always light a cigarette at the very sight of me," said Li Bencai, a local HIV carrier, "only to observe in which way the wind was blowing so they could avoid being down wind of me"

The isolation doubled his agony. Li said he had given up hope until volunteers of the program came in 2001 with a pat on the back. "They told me to get stop agonizing and do something to promote AIDS prevention knowledge among the villagers."

Today at 37, Li runs a teahouse and a lumber plant in his hometown.

The program has been successful thanks to the support of the local governments, volunteers and local health workers, said Adrian Davis, from the Britain's Department for International Development (DFID) in China.

The DFID is expected to spend an additional 30 million pounds over the next five years on new AIDS prevention programs in China, Davis said without elaborating.

The Chinese Ministry of Health estimated in 2005 that the country had about 650,000 HIV/AIDS cases, including 75,000 AIDS patients.

Among China's drug addicts, 288,000 were found to be infected with AIDS, said Zeng Yi, chief scientist with the STD (sexually-transmitted diseases) and AIDS Prevention Center under the Ministry of Health.

Yunnan, which borders southeast Asia's Golden Triangle, had 40,157 cases of HIV infection at the end of 2005.

Sichuan had reported a total of 7,646 cases by June this year.

Source: Xinhua