China’s migrants are a new front in AIDS fight

By Lucy Hornby

BEIJING (Reuters) - The new face of AIDS in China is a shy man with a heavy provincial accent, a weathered face and the rough hands of a manual worker.

Zhang Xiaohu, a character in an educational film for migrant workers, is part of a trend that worries Chinese officials: the potential for AIDS to spread among the estimated 200 million rural migrants driving the country’s rapid economic expansion.

AIDS in China has to date mostly been limited to drug users, gay men, prostitutes and the victims of reckless blood-buying schemes in the 1990s. There are about 700,000 cases of HIV/AIDS in China, according to official statistics.

“The epidemic is lowly prevalent in general but it is highly prevalent among specific groups such as migrant workers, and in some regions particularly remote areas and the countryside,” Wang Weizhen, deputy director of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment at the ministry of health, said on Sunday, according to state media.

Higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases and other risk factors among male migrants have spurred an intensified effort to reach them before HIV spreads faster among them, and into the broader population.

“Other at-risk groups are rather small, but this one is huge,” said Sun Xinhua, head of an office to combat AIDS that reports directly to the State Council, China’s cabinet.

China’s construction workers, miners and casual laborers have all the ingredients for HIV to spread. Often far from home, bored, and with some spare cash in their pockets, few of them use condoms when they visit prostitutes as rootless as themselves.

“You must stay away from these women and keep yourself out of trouble, especially when you are working away from home,” said Liu Guilin, 38, at a dusty construction site in eastern Beijing.

“There are many dark corners now in Beijing. There are always women coming up to you and trying to drag you away.”

Sexually transmitted diseases are more common among the migrants than the general population, but they have less access to healthcare and information than permanent city dwellers.

Their fear of rejection from co-workers and of losing jobs make many reluctant to test for HIV, which if not held back by drugs leads to full-blown AIDS and usually death.

“I heard that you are doomed if you get AIDS. So if we found out anyone had it, we would stay well away from him,” said Zhang Shiliang, 35, a slight cement layer who has left his family behind in Sichuan for six years while he forages for work.

Zhang, who said he was not clear on how AIDS spread, doubted that any of the hundreds of workers sharing his makeshift dormitory could have contracted the disease.

BARRIERS

The stigma and fear surrounding AIDS and embarrassment about talking about sex compound the difficulty of reaching the migrant population, who often lack access to information and deeply distrust officialdom.  Continued…

Source

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Posts:


BEIJING (Reuters) - Women must be more involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS, a disease increasingly being spread through sex, and men must also be encouraged to respect women more, a senior U.N. official said Friday. Nafis Sadik, U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS in the Asia-Pacific region, told a poverty alleviation conference in Beijing that lack

Full Post: Women need empowerment in fight against AIDS: U.N.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Tan Ee Lyn HONG KONG (Reuters) - Drug-resistant HIV strains are turning up in parts of China as the virus stretches beyond high-risk groups and gains a stronger foothold in the general population, a leading Chinese AIDS researcher said. Chen Zhiwei, director of the AIDS Institute in Hong Kong, described the trends as “alarming” and warned

Full Post: Drug-resistant HIV strains turning up in China
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BEIJING (Reuters) - The number of gay men in China who are HIV positive has risen sharply in the last three years, according to a survey of Chinese cities conducted by the Ministry of Health. Men with HIV make up 4.9 percent of the gay population, up from 0.4 percent in 2005, the Xinhua news agency

Full Post: China sees sharp rise in HIV-positive gay men
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will provide two imported HIV drugs to patients who develop resistance to cheaper, domestic alternatives, state media said on Monday, going some way to meeting a key demand of AIDS treatment activists. The decision to hand out the new drugs means that nine of 20 drugs to combat AIDS are now available

Full Post: China rolls out two HIV drugs to tackle resistance
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Ian Ransom BEIJING (Reuters) - A woman in eastern China has died and a 2-year-old girl is critically ill in the north after becoming infected with bird flu, the Chinese Health Ministry said on Sunday. After not reporting a single human infection in almost a year, China has now confirmed three cases of the H5N1 virus

Full Post: China reports two new cases of bird flu, one dead

Site Navigation

Most Read

Search

Contact

  • kinwrite.com@gmail.com