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China faces up to Aids challenge
By Louisa Lim
December 9, 2004
Yunnan - In a picturesque village of bamboo huts near China's border with
Burma, 37-year-old Sha Wang complains he has been sick for over a year.
"I always feel tired, and I can't work in the fields. I haven't been to the
doctor as I don't have any money," he said.
Other villagers know what is wrong, they say Sha Wang has Aids.
He admits sharing needles to inject heroin for years. Now he has exiled himself
to a hut to protect the health of his two sons.
"I'm scared of infecting my little devils. If you spend time with other people,
you just can't say how the disease is passed on. I've heard you can infect
people through eating with them," he said.
His ignorance is shocking, especially since he says at least 20 people in his
village, Laxiang, have suffered the same disease, another 20 in the next
settlement.
They are victims of geography, living on the edge of the Golden Triangle, where
heroin crosses the border from Burma, often bringing with it the modern scourge
of Aids. The area has one of the highest infection rates in China.
Thirty kilometres from where Sha Wang lies in his shack is a sleepy town,
Ruili.
This is ground zero for China's Aids epidemic.
In 1989, local officials found almost 150 heroin users were HIV positive - the
first confirmed cases in China.
And since then Aids has devastated poor farming communities in the area.
Li Chaoliang works for the Yunnan Provincial Working Committee for HIV/Aids
control, and he says the situation is critical.
"The impact is obvious in border areas where Aids is prevalent. In some
districts the population is beginning to fall. It's actually shrinking. And the
influence of Aids on economic growth is very serious. Aids is influencing the
whole of social development in these areas," he said.
Strips of pink-lit karaoke bars line the streets of Ruili, and young girls
sprawl on sofas singing pop songs as they wait for passing custom. The sex
industry is poorly disguised. But these girls could also be unsuspecting
incubators for Aids.
Mrs Yang runs a brothel where 12 girls work. She tells me condom use is the
norm, but it does not always happen.
"Most customers use condoms, but sometimes the girls come back and they say to
me this client is difficult to deal with. That sometimes happens. But it's
quite rare," she said.
Officials say the spread of Aids through sex is on the rise in Yunnan province,
a sign that the disease is working its way into the population at large.
Beijing responds
In the past year, the central government in Beijing has tried to bring the
problem of Aids into the open across China. But has it succeeded?
Wu Zunyou from the National Centre for HIV/Aids intervention says the changes
have been marked.
"It's a great change in terms of finding the number of HIV infected people. And
also for effective but sensitive interventions such as condom promotion and
methadone for heroin addicts and also for needle exchange programmes. The
central government allocated far more money for these programmes," he said.
China's budget for combating Aids doubled to $98m in 2004.
In Yunnan's provincial capital, Kunming, that increase is symbolised by a new
needle exchange project.
The centre also includes games rooms and a library about HIV/Aids. It only
opened in March, but more than 1,000 heroin addicts now use its services.
Project manager Feng Yu said its existence showed how the government's attitude
had changed in the last year.
"The police and local government have been quite supportive of our project. I
think our government has begun to realise that Aids has serious consequences
for the whole society and the country."
One heroin addict, 35-year-old Mr Wang, comes to the centre every few days for
new needles.
"Before I didn't really know much about Aids," he said. "I've learned more by
coming here."
So it seems the message is starting to trickle down in urban centres.
But it is not getting through to those that need it most. Like one young addict
near the Burmese border, who admitted he still shared needles with others.
"We just use each other's needles freely," he said. "And sometimes, when people
throw away needles, I'll pick them up and use them again.
"We don't know if it's dangerous, we're not scared to use them. We need money
to buy new needles and we don't have any money. "
His world has contracted to one pressing need - to get the next fix, whatever
the cost.
And that cost is being passed on to other drug users blinded by need, to their
unsuspecting families and, ultimately, to the government in lost lives.
The Chinese leadership has turned its attention to the Aids crisis. But it has
done so too late for this young addict, and for Sha Wang, whose ignorance is
proof of the government's past failure.
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