China says it’s caring for Henan AIDS villagers
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An official from a poverty-stricken area of China where some believe hundreds of thousands of villagers have HIV/AIDS said on Wednesday the number is less than 8,000 and they are doing well with government help.
International groups estimated that a botched blood-selling scheme in the 1990s had infected a million villagers with HIV in the impoverished central province of Henan, where the municipality of Zhu Madian was worst hit.
Song Xuantao, the Communist Party chief for Zhu Madian, told reporters that of a population of 8.3 million, only 7,800 HIV carriers had been found in a 2003 screening. All were being offered free treatment and were receiving allowances.
“They are in a stable mood and have confidence in their lives. Their worries about their children’s future have also been minimized,” Song told reporters on the sidelines of the annual session of parliament in Beijing.
“They were infected because of poverty and lack of proper transfusion procedures at that time,” Song said in rare official comments about the issue, adding that 81,000 people in Zhu Madian had sold blood in the 1990s.
Song said the government had spent around 10,000 yuan ($1,250) a year on each patient’s treatment and subsidized the victims’ housing, food and their children’s education. Chinese AIDS activists have accused the government of not doing enough.
A joint statement by the World Health Organization and the Health Ministry in January said there were 650,000 HIV carriers in China, down 30 percent from the previous estimate of 840,000.
It said the revised figure was due to improved data collection.
But experts warned of complacency and said China remained a front in global efforts to curb the disease’s spread given its patchy rural health care system, increasingly mobile population and more open society.
China was widely criticized for its initial denial and cover-up of the Henan mass infection and it still harasses or detains journalists who sneak into the area.
But Song criticized the role of some journalists and non-governmental organizations in Henan.
“Some journalists would use any means to whip up a story and they pay the villagers for whatever quotes they want,” Song said.
“And some NGOs don’t come here to really help the villagers, but just to show off. I don’t welcome them.”
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