Yunnan, Sichuan tackle HIV/AIDS issue
By Di Fang, Huang Zhiling (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-02-28 07:54

Anyone from Southwest China's Yunnan Province who tests positive for HIV should let his or her spouse know within a month after the test result is confirmed, a new province regulation stipulates.

If an HIV carrier refuses, a special medical worker will complete the task, the local regulation says.

Chen Juemin, head of the Yunnan Provincial Health Bureau, said informing testees and their spouses of the outcome of an HIV test is a critical part of AIDS screening.

The new regulation has detailed rules about what should be told to whom and how. It also sets out some specific rules about informing people in prison or held in custody.

According to the regulation, the testees should be first to be informed. If the outcome is positive, medical workers must tell the person face to face. If the test is negative, telephone and other means are acceptable.

The spouses of people who test positive must also be informed, whether by the testees themselves or by medical workers. Free HIV tests and consulting services are available for the spouses of HIV carriers.

In another development, much headway has been made in Gongmin Village in Zizhong, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, in creating a bias-free environment for local HIV/AIDS sufferers.

The village is believed to have the country's second largest number of HIV carriers after Wenlou Village in Shangcai, Central China's Henan Province. Seventy-eight farmers in the town have been confirmed as HIV carriers. Most of them contracted the deadly virus while selling blood in Henan in 1995. Thirty-eight of them have died.

It is now common to see an HIV carrier playing poker in a crowded teahouse. This would have been unimaginable three years ago.

At that time, whenever HIV carriers stepped into a teahouse, other customers would leave immediately. They could not sell vegetables they had planted because nobody wanted to come into contact with them.

"All the HIV carriers had long hair, for barbers in the town refused to cut their hair," said Qin, who was diagnosed as a carrier in 1996 while working on a construction site in Yanji in Northeast China's Jilin Province. He had sold blood in Henan in the previous year.

In 2000, the country's largest bilateral co-operative project in the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and AIDS started with a grant of 15.3 million pounds from the Department for International Development (DFID) of Britain. The project was first implemented in Southwest China's Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, which have a high incidence of AIDS, and is intended to be a role model to be emulated nationwide.

In February 2002, Zizhong started trial implementation of the project by issuing a questionnaire which showed that the most cherished desire of HIV carriers was eradication of prejudice, said Wu Xiaomin, a medic from the county epidemic station who oversees the implementation of the project.

Since February 2002, the county has held 40 training classes teaching nearly 4,000 county officials, medical workers, teachers, students, policemen, HIV carriers and their families how the virus is spread and how to prevent it.

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