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From:	"Marco Gomes" [ profile ]
Subject:	RE: [GYCA-AsiaPacific] Beijing University Students Unwilling To Have HIV-Positive Classmates
Sent:	Jun 8th, 2007 - 03:16:43

	Thank you for the article. It's really insightful, but also very depressing. I've done some research on the summary of HIV/AIDS in China and the challanges of human rights within people living with HIV/AIDS. You can the declaration "Lock Doors" by clicking here: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/china0803/2.htm#_Toc49242552 Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice Premier Wu Yi announced a new policy for comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in December 2003. The 'Four Frees and One Care Policy' had the following aims: Free anti-HIV drugs to AIDS patients who are rural residents or people with financial difficulties living in urban areas -Free voluntary counselling and testing -Free drugs to HIV infected pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission, and HIV testing of newborn babies -Free schooling for children orphaned by AIDS -Care and economic assistance to the households of people living with HIV/AIDS.25 During 2004 and 2005 the government began to implement this policy in some parts of the country. It also surprised some people by increasing its support for harm reduction among injecting drug users and condom use among high risk groups. China has the capacity to combat AIDS. Despite a severely damaged national public health system and discriminatory hospital practices, some individual doctors and nurses have made extraordinary efforts to care for people with HIV. Behind the scenes, some senior policy makers are pressing Beijing to issue increasingly progressive-sounding statements on the epidemic and to undertake serious legal reform. A handful of small-scale pilot projects on the borders, the products of collaboration between some concerned Chinese officials and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), show what could be done. Yet in practice, Beijing has thus far done remarkably little. While the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 led, after a fitful start, to the full mobilization of the state to bring that deadly disease under control, the more widespread and dangerous HIV/AIDS epidemic has been treated as a lesser priority. One obvious reason for the differences in Chinas treatment of AIDS and SARS is economic: SARS, an airborne disease, directly threatened the health of foreign visitors and had a visible impact on Chinas trade and tourist industry. Another is the official discourse surrounding the virus, which links it with people considered expendable in Chinas march toward modernization: injection drug users, sex workers, men who have sex with men, and ethnic minorities. Thus many people living with HIV/AIDS in China live in a health care vacuum without hospital care, antiretroviral drugs, or counseling. In Yunnan, Human Rights Watch discovered that the door to a hospital AIDS ward was actually closed and padlocked. ocked Doors highlights the importance of protecting the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and those at risk of contracting the disease in order to combat the epidemic. It draws on fieldwork in Yunnan province, Beijing, and Hong Kong, as well as archival research, to document human rights issues related to Chinas HIV/AIDS epidemic. Rights abuses documented in this report include: the spread of HIV through unsafe state-run blood collection centers in the 1990s; the governments failure to provide treatment or compensation to the overwhelming majority of those who acquired HIV directly or indirectly through those blood sales; and Beijings failure to prosecute responsible local officials; restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly, association and the right to information of those living with HIV/AIDS and persons seeking to help them; arbitrary detention of injection drug users; discrimination based on HIV status by state actors, including government hospitals, clinics and government employees; mandatory HIV testing in state facilities and violations of patient confidentiality; and lack of access to treatment and other issues in Chinas under-funded and problem-ridden health care system. Marco Gomes Regional Focal Point North America marco (at) youthaidscoalition.org or regionalcanada2006 (at) hotmail.com www.youthaidscoalition.org Toronto, Ontario Canada +1-416-906-8392 livepositive:livepositive.ca. (YPLWHA fight back!!) GYCAliving positively:http://www.youthaidscoalition.org/living.html AIDS is no longer a death sentence for those who can get the medicines. Now it's up to the politicians to create the "comprehensive strategies" to better treat the disease. -Bill Clinton ----Original Message Follows---- From: "Hien Dao" Reply-To: GYCA-AsiaPacific (at) groups.takingitglobal.org To: "marco Gomes" Subject: [GYCA-AsiaPacific] Beijing University Students Unwilling To Have HIV-Positive Classmates Date: 8 Jun 2007 01:32:06 -0000 www.kaisernetwork.org More Than 20% of Beijing University Students Unwilling To Have HIV-Positive Classmates, Survey Finds More than 20% of university students in Beijing are unwilling to have an HIV-positive classmate, according to a recently released China Youth University for Political Science survey, Xinhuanet reports. Researchers conducted the survey among 1,089 students from 12 universities in Beijing. They found that 32.9% responded positively to having an HIV-positive classmate, while 23% responded that they are unwilling to have an HIV-positive classmate. In addition, 7% of survey respondents said they believe that HIV-positive people should not be admitted to universities, while 31% said they believe HIV-positive people should be admitted only "with certain restrictions." The survey also found that 4% of respondents said they believe HIV-positive people should not be allowed to find employment and that 43% said they believe HIV-positive people should be allowed to find employment "with certain restrictions." Three-quarters of the respondents said they would participate in HIV/AIDS prevention activities, the survey found. According to the survey, 26% of respondents said HIV/AIDS is an ethical issue. In addition, 50% of respondents said the mode of transmission determines if the virus concerns morality, according to the survey. Many students who participated in the survey lacked knowledge about HIV/AIDS -- about one-third could not distinguish between HIV-positive people and people living with AIDS -- Xinhuanet reports. Zhou Xiaochun, a member of the research group, said that university students are "generally more tolerant" toward HIV-positive people and have a "better knowledge of ways to contract HIV, but horror and discrimination still manifest themselves in the survey." Zhou added that the discrimination likely exists because many of the respondents associate AIDS with moral corruption. Many Chinese students consider it a "challenge" to shake hands or hug an HIV-positive person and a "breakthrough" if they do so, Zhou said (Xinhuanet, 6/5). -- ---------------------------------- Dao Thi Thu Hien National Focal Point Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS Hanoi, Vietnam www.youthaidscoalition.org hien (at) youthaidscoalition.org ------------------------------------------- * Powered By TIG Groups http://groups.takingitglobal.org/ * Group Archives: http://groups.takingitglobal.org/GYCA-AsiaPacific/messages/ * To unsubscribe, email GYCA-AsiaPacific-unsubscribe (at) groups.takingitglobal.org * My subscription settings, GYCA-AsiaPacific-settings (at) groups.takingitglobal.org _________________________________________________________________ Upgrade to Windows Live Hotmail for free today! www.newhotmail.ca?icid=WLHMENCA151 !DSPAM:46690257152521744213134!