| Summary |
China faces what could be the largest HIV/AIDS epidemic
in the world. At least 1.5 million men, women and children are affected,
and probably many more. During the 1990s local authorities in at least
7 provinces were complicit in transmission of HIV to hundreds of thousands
or even millions of villagers through an unsafe but highly profitable
blood collection industry. People living with HIV/AIDS in China face
widespread discrimination from state and society, and combined with
lack of redress, this means they live like fugitives. China has the
capacity to combat AIDS, as shown by increasing economic prosperity,
and by the mobilisation to tackle SARS. However, the same energy has
not been put into combating HIV/AIDS because this threatens China's
trade and tourism less directly, and because those associated with
the disease - sex workers, drug users, men who have sex with men and
ethnic minorities - are considered expendable. This report based on
archival research and fieldwork in Yunnan province, Beijing and Hong
Kong, argues that it is in China's national interest to improve health
system, genuinely implement its national HIV/AIDS action plan, and
draw on the expertise and leadership of people living with HIV.
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