Posted on 05/04/2003 2:45:58 PM PDT by theFIRMbss
China on brink of 'explosive' HIV/AIDS epidemic: report
Jun. 27, 2002 Provided by: Associated Press
Written by: AUDRA ANG
BEIJING (AP) -- China is on the brink of an "explosive" AIDS epidemic and could have 10 million infected people by the end of the decade, a UN study released Thursday predicts.
The report urged the Chinese government to spend more on education and prevention, and complained that many Chinese officials lack commitment to fighting AIDS. Talking more openly about the disease will help to remove its stigma and make people willing to come forward for testing and treatment, it said.
"The virus is still spreading, and we need to marshal all our resources in a very different way if we want to stop it," said Kerstin Leitner, UN resident co-ordinator in China.
China reported its first AIDS case in 1985.
Now the country is "on the verge of a catastrophe that could result in unimaginable suffering, economic loss and social devastation," said the 89-page report, entitled HIV/AIDS: China's Titanic Peril.
It said data collected last year showed 30,736 people were infected with HIV, 1,594 had AIDS and 684 had died from illnesses related to the disease.
But, the study said, the true number of people carrying the AIDS virus was far higher, between 800,000 and 1.5 million -- most of them infected through intravenous drug use or poor sanitation in China's blood-buying industry.
That figure could soar to 10 million by 2010, said Siri Tellier, chair of the UN Theme Group on HIV/AIDS in China, which prepared the report.
"Once you have a certain concentration of it, it will hit the general population," she said.
The study warned that sexual intercourse -- both heterosexual and homosexual -- is fast growing as a means of infection.
"All indications point to the brink of explosive HIV/AIDS epidemics in increasing numbers of areas and populations, with an imminent risk to the widespread dissemination of HIV to the general population through sexual transmission," the study said.
In April, state media reported that intravenous drug use accounted for 68 per cent of infections, while blood-selling accounted for 9.7 per cent.
That was the most specific official estimate yet of people infected by China's blood-buying industry, blamed for spreading the virus to thousands of poor, rural villagers.
Collectors bought blood from villagers, pooled it and extracted plasma -- the liquid part of the blood sought for medical uses. They then reinjected the blood back into the sellers, apparently to limit their blood loss.
Though the government has set up safe blood banks and held a first-ever AIDS conference last year, the report indicated efforts still fall short of effective prevention.
Activists who have tried to raise a public alarm about the disease have been harassed by local officials reluctant to admit their areas have a sex or drug trade.
Lack of knowledge makes China vulnerable to the disease, the report said. Many people still think HIV can be contracted through mosquito bites or shaking hands. Other problems include poverty and lack of access to condoms.
The sheer size of the country makes education and treatment difficult.
"What is so much harder is how you get to this vast number of villages that you need to get to. That is the real challenge," Leitner said. "It's not that people are dumb or they don't want to hear about it. It's the scale that is so scary sometimes."
Dr. Emile Fox, the adviser in China for UNAIDS, the United Nations' AIDS-fighting agency, said the virus spreads differently in different regions, forcing health authorities to create individual strategies for controlling it.
"It's not one small homogenous community where you could have an increase that goes in a certain way," Fox said.
HIV trends in China are estimated through tests administered at national and provincial levels on vulnerable population groups, such as prostitutes, drug-users, pregnant women and people with sexually transmitted infections, the study said.
This is the same crud that allowed Aids to spread in the US. The "Aids is "everyone's" disease" lie.
Quarantine the homosexuals and watch the spread of Aids stop!
Was the whole village the same blood type? I know some blood type(s) (O I believe) is a universal donor, but isn't it harmful (for example) to give A+ blood to a B- person?
Yeah if the A+ is followed by a Bert!
I can't even imagine what an epidemic of that size would mean.
For a country with 1.3 billion people (1,300,000,000), the numbers of AIDS mortality and infection are miniscule.
This is of course done in the United States every day, except for the pooling part and the time delay.
"Using a technique called apheresis, blood is drawn from the donor's vein into an apheresis instrument, which separates the blood into separate portions by centrifugation. By appropriately adjusting the instrument, a selected portion of the blood, such as the platelets, can be recovered, while the rest of the blood is returned to the donor either into the same vein or into a vein in the other arm. " - redcross.org
It's not the numbers themselves, it's that the virus(es) are debilitating to a given population, expensive and difficult to treat; they tie up valuable resources, which in China is no small consideration; most importantly it's the potential that such numbers portend.
We know China's medical practices are lagging behind ours; the question is how completely will their medical services collapse in the face of such a calamity, and what are the consequences for the rest of us
Add in SARS and the sexual imbalance caused by years of sex-selection abortion, and China's demographics look awful for the deep future.
Like the "70 years of bad winters" in the USSR, this problem was entirely created by a murderous, tyrannical, and totally illgitimate regime that kills or kidnaps children if their parents have more than one.
The problem is fostered by a sick culture in china that tolerates such an illegitimate regime, and that places a value on male children over female children to the point that female babies are often murdered by their parents.
The bastards can rot in hell for all I care.
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