China strives to eliminate discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, April 06, 2004

China strives to eliminate discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients

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The amendment draft to China's 15-year-old law on contagious disease prevention and control has canceled forcible isolation of HIV/AIDS patients, an important legal step to eliminate bias against HIV/AIDS patients.

The amendment draft, which was submitted to the on-going eighth meeting of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee for deliberation, dropped the AIDS prevention and control management standard from the highest level to the medium level, which did not require forcible isolation of HIV/AIDSpatients any more.

"In the past, every HIV/AIDS patient must be isolated. If he orshe refused, policemen were entitled to force them into isolation wards. However, the spread channels of HIV/AIDS are quite limited and the disease's spread is not as strong as other acute contagious diseases. Forcible isolation was unnecessary and finally built a discriminated social environment for AIDS patients," said a member of the NPC's Standing Committee, who declined to be named.

He added that the amendment draft canceling the forcible isolation to HIV/AIDS patients is an institutional start to eliminate the stigma and discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients.

China now has more than 300 laws and regulations on AIDS prevention and control, which were framed by both central government and local governments at all levels.

Some local regulations still take AIDS as a venereal disease and impose some unreasonable duties on the AIDS patients, which infringed AIDS patients' residence rights, employment rights, education rights, and marriage rights as well as privacy and caused great panic in society.

It is reported that China now has 840,000 HIV carriers, including 80,000 AIDS patients. The figure might rocket to ten million in the best case by 2010, predicted experts. The UN has warned China that cases could reach 20 million by 2010, if drasticactions were not immediately taken.

Koen Vanormelingen, chief of the Health and Nutrition Section of the United Nations Children's Fund Office in China said the stigma and discrimination against HIV/AIDS carriers had become thekey barrier for China winning the war against the disease.

On Dec.1, 2003, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao shook hands and talked closely with three AIDS patients at a Beijing hospital as the government marking the World AIDS Day.

It was the first time that a Chinese premier had met with AIDS patients. It marked a milestone in China's HIV/AIDS prevention andtreatment efforts and showed the government's strong commitment tothe issue, said Ray Yip, director of China-US AIDS Prevention and Care Project.

Source: Xinhua

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