BEIJING, June 20 (Xinhua) -- China will spend 10.4 billion yuan(1.35 billion U.S. dollars) of its 31 billion annual healthcare budget to support public healthcare in rural and urban areas, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday.

    The countryside will take the lion's share, with 9. 4 billion yuan allocated for the establishment of the rural cooperative health system in 23 provinces and regions across the country. The other 1.03 billion yuan will be used to promote the urban public health system in 22 provinces and regions in central and western China, according to the ministry.

    Farmers have been joining the rural cooperative health system in droves as the ministry brings all districts that have a rural population of more than 50 percent into its financing scheme. It looks as though the State Council's ambitious target of covering 80 percent of the country's rural areas by the end of 2007 will be met.

    In the cities, the ministry has offered three to four yuan per capita to support disease prevention and control, women's health, children and the elderly, and public health education in local communities.

    In March, the Chinese government signed off on a 31.3 billion yuan (4.1 billion U.S. dollars) healthcare budget for 2007, up 86.8 percent on the previous year.

Anti-drug campaign yields result

By Wu Jiao
Updated: 2007-06-16 06:43

Drug addiction slowing down: UN report

Rays of Hope for Africa's AIDS Children

Little Natasha is a giggling, wriggling bundle of mischief. She adores Barney the Dinosaur, claps along to her favorite songs, and throws a typical 3-year-old's temper tantrums.

Natasha, who picked up the AIDS virus in her mother's womb, also suffers from hearing problems, rashes and stomach upsets, and can't play outdoors too often because she easily catches cold.

But she is alive. So very alive.

Natasha's health represents a small but significant victory over an epidemic gripping South Africa and neighboring countries. AIDS drugs are turning what was a certain death sentence for infants and young children into a manageable disease, providing a glimmer of hope on a continent of gloom.

But a long, hard road lies ahead. In Sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 10 percent of infected children are receiving the medication they need. Even in South Africa, which has a relatively advanced AIDS-fighting network, an estimated 5.5 million people are estimated to have the virus, including about 240,000 children, only some 25,000 of whom have had the treatment that saved Natasha.

Last year, an estimated 950 South Africans died each day from AIDS-related diseases and a further 1,400 were infected each day, according to the Medical Research Council. UNAIDS head Peter Piot warned a conference in the coastal city of Durban this month that for every person in the country who started taking AIDS drugs, another five contracted the virus.

And despite the grim statistics and never-ending funerals, many South African men continue to have unprotected sex with multiple partners despite government pleas to change their behavior.

On a continent where poverty, war and lack of education rob children of their futures, AIDS attacks on many fronts. Even children who survive are often orphaned and vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Natasha clung to life against the odds. She stood little chance of survival at birth. Doctors referred her to Bowy House, a love-filled home with room for about 15 children.

"She was so thin you could see through her," Lalie Lombaard said with a shudder. Lombaard has cared for dozens of children at the home in Paarl, a town about one hour's drive from Cape Town.

Given the stigma that still surrounds AIDS in Africa, the identities of children are fiercely guarded and their surnames are rarely released. Under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Natasha has the right to privacy.

She also has the right to life.

The South African government, long criticized for doing too little, now has the world's biggest treatment program, and children are a focal point of a five-year AIDS program unveiled in May. Authorities have also vowed to step up prevention programs to stop fetuses being infected. Other governments such as Zambia, Malawi and Botswana are also giving more priority to children.

UNAIDS and the U.N. Children's Fund say 2.3 million children in sub-Saharan Africa are HIV-positive, most of them infected by their mothers because they did not receive drugs taken for granted in wealthy countries to prevent transmission of the virus.

Globally, an estimated 530,000 children were newly infected last year and 380,000 died of AIDS, the vast majority in Africa. Without treatment, half of infected infants die before age 2.

Throughout southern Africa, child mortality rates have soared because of AIDS, reversing health gains from better sanitation and immunization even in relatively prosperous countries such as Botswana and South Africa.

When Natasha arrived at Bowy House, aged nine months, she had twig-thin limbs, protruding ribs and a balding head. Photographs taken only three months later show her restored to health, celebrating her first birthday with her parents and a pink-and-green cake decorated with fairies.

Her photo album gives snapshots of the many small signs of progress across southern Africa. Lower drug prices, easier diagnosis, and better training of health workers augur a dramatic increase in the numbers of lives that will be saved. And government efforts are being boosted by the Clinton Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, U.N. money and President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

There are a whole host of other programs. For instance, backed by funding from drug companies, the Texas-based Baylor College of Medicine has an acclaimed pediatric AIDS initiative with children's clinics in some of the most ravaged countries.

In Botswana, more than 3,800 children are receiving care and treatment at clinics affiliated with the Baylor initiative, including its flagship hospital in the capital, Gaborone. The aim is also to assign foreign physicians and nurses to ease debilitating staff shortages and train local health workers.

Other poor African countries are taking heart. For instance, the Zambian government has shifted its priority from purely high-risk adults to getting treatment to more children.

"The most significant success we have now is that we have a recognition that this is a priority area," said Albert Mwango, AIDS medical coordinator at Zambia's health ministry.

Eric Goemaere, the head of Medecins Sans Frontieres in South Africa, blames lack of political will for past inaction, because child AIDS wasn't a problem in North America and Europe and drug companies had little financial incentive to develop a child-friendly therapy.

In 2005, 57 children in the U.S. were infected by their mothers. In the impoverished Cape Town slum of Khayelitsha alone _ home to some 500,000 people _ it was three times as high, according to Goemaere.

Khayelitsha, where one in four pregnant women is infected, is now home to one of South Africa's busiest anti-AIDS programs, with about 500 children on medication. Wednesdays are dedicated pediatric days and the no-frills clinic set up by MSF reverberates with children's shouts.

Children have remarkably few side-effects, partly because their systems cope better, says Goemaere. But there are other problems; older children battle with rejection by family and friends and often lapse into depression, he says.

The very young can't swallow tablets and have to take multiple doses of syrup, according to a body weight formula that can baffle caregivers _ often illiterate grandmothers. The medicine needs to be refrigerated, difficult in poor areas with no electricity. And cash-strapped caregivers often can't afford the cost of driving kids to clinics.

But there is progress. Prices of ARV drugs for children have come down dramatically over the past 12-18 months. The Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative negotiated a reduction in the cost of pediatric drugs _ often taken in combination _ to $60 per year. Pharmaceutical companies previously accused of being greedy are now lining up to fund children's projects in a complex network of public-private partnerships.

The local government provides drugs free of charge to Bowy House, where Natasha has spent most of her life and has come to regard its care-givers and children as her family. Staff there recently drove her on a seven-hour journey over mountains and dirt roads to spend time with her mother, who is dying of AIDS. Natasha has an extended family in her dusty village, but her father is unable to care for her. There is no electricity and no schools.

The girl's favorite activity is to "go tata" _ out for a drive. She adores weekends at the beach, being pushed in a stroller and feeding the ducks. In summer she and her friends chase through the garden sprinklers, despite the risk of catching cold.

"In general we forget that they are ill children. They are naughty and full of mischief but when we see how quickly they can have a setback it reminds us that they aren't normal," says Lombaard.

Natasha's day begins with breakfast and then her first drink of medication at 8 a.m. _ she'll have another at 8 p.m. She doesn't complain about the foul taste because she knows it makes her feel better.

There are morning songs and dance. Natasha, who wears a hearing aid, is partial to "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands."

At lunch, she opens her mouth full of cottage pie and laughs hilariously.

Children at Bowy House are assigned a color to give them "ownership" of something _ Natasha has an orange teddy bear in her cot.

She knows how to defend herself against Luvo, a boisterous 3-year-old boy who also looked like a famine victim when he arrived at Bowy House and now revels in annoying the girls. And she thrashes in fury when Lombaard, her surrogate mother, has no time to pick her up.

The home is an example of the localized care that many experts say should be Africa's model. The government pays for the medication, but its founder, Hester Veldsman, who founded Bowy House, relies entirely on private donations and struggles to meet monthly expenses of $9,500 and is always grateful even for donations of diapers and groceries.

And what happens when communities don't care or can't cope?

In Zimbabwe, about 1.3 million children _ or one in five _ are classed as orphans and 100,000 live in child-headed households, according to UNICEF estimates. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's confrontation with the West has caused humanitarian aid to plummet and families are collapsing under an inflation rate heading toward 4,000 percent.

Zimbabwe's official media regularly report on children being raped by HIV-infected men who believe sex with a virgin will cure them.

Similar abuse has been reported in impoverished Lesotho and Swaziland, where AIDS has slashed life expectancy to the mid-30s and left an army of orphans vulnerable to exploitation. School enrollment rates for girls have dropped as they quit to care for younger siblings and sick parents or simply can't afford the fees.

In Zambia, the AIDS-related death of parents and grandparents coupled with migration to cities has left many rural children with nobody to care for them. Faith-based organizations are struggling to fill the gap.

In Cape Town, a church-based charity called Act of Grace plans to use some 150 shipping containers as emergency shelters for AIDS orphans.

Veldsman even now is overcome by tears when she thinks of Bowy, the 5-year-old boy for whom it was named, and who died months before AIDS drugs became available.

She counts Natasha as one of her victories.

"The doctors gave up on her, and I said, No, we can't give up," said Veldsman.

Aside from the medicine, there was one other vital ingredient in Natasha's survival, Veldsman said: "Tender loving care."

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AIDS no longer a death sentence for South Africa's children

Abandoned in a bar as a baby and given just weeks to live by doctors seven years later, Tommy Jarvis is living proof AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence for youngsters in South Africa.

Tommy, now a strapping 13-year-old who spends his spare time riding his bike and practicing karate, makes light of the day that medics gave up on him.

"They said I would be dead in three weeks but look at me now," says the still slightly incredulous teenager who now wants to serve as an inspiration to youngsters with a similar story.

Thea Jarvis, who adopted Tommy after his birth mother abandoned him in a township drinking hole when he was one-year-old, recalls how the family became aware of his HIV-positive status when he later contracted pneumonia.

Although AIDS-fighting anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) had come on the market, they were prohibitively expensive and she was faced with a dreadful dilemma.

"I had four children who were HIV positive and couldn't afford to put them all on ARVs," Jarvis told AFP at her sprawling family home on the outskirts of Johannesburg where she and an army of assistants care for more than 70 abandoned babies.

It was not until Tommy, then aged eight, was "on his deathbed" that she managed to scrape together the money to put him and the other children on a course of ARVs which have given them all a new lease of life.

Tommy was one of the stars of the show at last week's national AIDS conference in Durban where he addressed delegates about his life and how he hopes to help others replicate his stirring story.

"I want to look after albino babies that can't be looked after by their mums and dads," he said alongside his visibly proud adoptive mother.

The arrival on the market of more affordable ARVs has helped reduce the mortality rate among HIV-positive youngsters as has a shift in government priorities, with the recent five-year AIDS programme specifically pledging to address the plight of vulnerable children.

The scale of the problem remains daunting however with the Medical Research Council estimating that some 45,000 children under 15 died due to AIDS in 2006.

According to Farai Dube of Johannesburg's Wits Paediatric HIV clinics, the change of attitude from the government is to be welcomed but only goes so far.

"No one was concentrating on children. There were very few advocacy groups and very few clinics taking responsibility of putting children on treatment. Only now are people beginning to analyse the children," he said.

But, as Dube pointed out, only 27,000 of the 123,000 HIV-infected children who are considered sick enough to require ARVs actually receive them.

Glenda Gray, director of the Johannesburg-based Perinatal HIV Research Unit, said drug firms had not prioritised treatment for children as rates of mother to child transmissions were much lower in the developed world than Africa.

"Paediatric formulations are not a big priority for big pharma. You don't make lots of money from children," Gray told AFP.

"It's an ongoing battle, the pressure for paediatric formulations is still required. Sometimes the medicine tastes terrible and you have to get your toddler to drink disgusting medicine."

The first person who really opened the world's eyes to the plight of Africa's young AIDS victims was 11-year-old Nkosi Johnson who delivered an electrifying speech at the 2000 international AIDS conference in Durban.

"I hate having AIDS because I get very sick and I get very sad when I think of all the other children and babies that are sick with AIDS," the diminutive youngster told 10,000 delegates from around the world.

Nkosi, who was at the time the country's longest-living HIV positive child, died the following year but his legacy persists.

His adoptive mother Gail Johnson, whose campaign for young AIDS victims is being turned into a Hollywood movie starring Naomi Watts, said Nkosi would have been thrilled children can get the medicines and live longer lives.

"But he would definitely, knowing him, be disappointed there are not as many as there should be," she told AFP.

Even when children manage to access ART, some have nobody to make sure they take them correctly, as their parents die or are too sick to care for them.

Those HIV sufferers who do survive beyond childhood often face huge challenges that their friends can only imagine, including how to develop relationships and have healthy children themselves.

Another face to the children's crisis also remains -- the estimated 11 million children in sub-Saharan Africa who have lost one or both parents to the disease and are often left to fend for themselves.

Seventeen-year-old Silindile Ncwane, from South Africa's eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, explained the tribulations of living with his elderly grandmother who took him and his siblings in after his mother died.

"For me it's very hard to get them ready for school every day and help them with their homework...(they) always ask questions I don't know how to answer and it's very hard for me. I am being a mother to them," he said.