Hospital donates funds to AIDS-hit area
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-08-27 14:44

"There won't be any ceremonial commemoration activities. We've donated the 500,000 yuan that was originally budgeted as a special purpose fund for the celebration because we want to do something more concrete and practical," said Li Junxiu, president of the hospital.

The fund will help expand 10 village-run clinics and upgrade the overall medical facilities in the county, said Nie Yong, deputy head of Shangcai County in the southwestern part of the Central China province.

The hospital has also sent several teams of doctors to rural areas this year to provide free medical consulting, examinations and treatment to the needy farmers in the province, and it launched academic exchanges with other hospitals to improve its overall strength.

Founded in 1904, the Henan Provincial People's Hospital developed from a small mission hospital into a leading hospital with the best facilities, technologies and services in the province.

The largely agricultural Henan Province, China's most populous, became the site of one of the country's worst AIDS outbreaks. A large number of farmers there were infected after selling blood to illegal dealers and having HIV-infected blood pumped back into them, before 1995.

The poverty-stricken Shangcai County, with a population of one million, had suffered most from the epidemic, which orphaned about 700 children.

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