Gao Yaojie, a retired doctor in the central Henan province, was among 10 people awarded the "Touching China" award, presented by the China Central Television (CCTV) station, the country's largest state-run network.

Gao has received prestigious international awards, including the Jonathan Mann award in 2001, but never in her own country, where she had up until recently been hounded by Henan regional officials.

The award is one of the highest profile honors and its presentation to Gao signifies a shift in the government's attitude towards the problem of farmers who have contracted HIV after selling blood in government-approved schemes.

The problem, which is especially acute in central China and notably Henan province, goes back to the 1980s.

In another unusual move, CCTV broadcast images of AIDS-stricken farmers lying in simple, makeshift clinics in villages. Such images are rarely shown on Chinese television.

Up to one million farmers are believed to have been infected with HIV in Henan alone after receiving tainted blood.

Infection came from the farmers having their blood pooled and then pumped back into them after the plasma was extracted to be sold.

The method was banned in the mid-1990s, but the central government did not respond initially even though farmers began dying mysteriously in the late 1990s and media first began reporting the problem in late 2000.

Local governments tried to cover up the problem by chasing away reporters and volunteers, of whom Gao was one of the first.

Despite being hounded, including having her phone tapped and being warned not to speak to reporters, Gao continued to visit villages to help patients and openly voice her criticism of official inaction.

Since 1996, Gao has spent 80,000 yuan (9,638 US dollars) of her own money to help 164 children orphaned by AIDS, and visited more than 100 villages.

She has seen more than 1,000 AIDS patients alone.

Gao told AFP Friday despite the central government seeming to pay more attention to the problem recently, much more work needed to be done.

"AIDS is not just a Henan problem. So many years this has been going on. It's so serious," Gao said. "But in many places AIDS outbreaks still haven't been reported. These places are still sealed up."

Other recipients of the award included China's first astronaut Yang Liwei; Hong Kong celebrity Jackie Chan; and Wei Shanhong, a Japanese lawyer who has worked for Chinese victims of Japan's World War II atrocities since 1963.

BEIJING (AFP) - Vice Premier and Health Minister Wu Yi recently held a three-hour private meeting with China's foremost AIDS activist Gao Yaojie, Gao told AFP.

The meeting is the latest indication that China wants to seriously address the AIDS problem which the United Nations said could lead to 20 million people infected by 2010 if immediate measures are not taken.

Wu requested Gao, who has been harassed for years by provincial officials, meet her at her hotel during Wu's visit to central Henan province in December to tour "AIDS villages" devastated by an outbreak caused by farmers selling blood in government-sponsored schemes that were unsafe.

Henan officials, including Vice Governor Wang Jumei, were ordered out of the room, Gao said.

"Only Wu Yi, me and Wu Yi's two aides were in the room. Wu Yi told me 'There's no one from the province here. You can say whatever you want,'" Gao said.

Wu asked about and listened to Gao's views on how to help the estimated hundreds of villages where large portions of farmers were infected with HIV  after selling blood in schemes begun in the mid-1980s to raise money for the province, which resold the blood to companies.

Gao said she told Wu the government should put priority on finding adoptive families for the thousands of children orphaned since adults began dying of AIDS a few years ago.

It was better to let families that want to adopt raise the children than leave them in poorly run orphanages or in villages with minimal help from extended relatives, some of whom also suffer from HIV/AIDS and have tried to sell young girls into marriage, Gao said.

Gao also urged Wu to crackdown on the growing problem of scam artists trying to sell fake medicine to AIDS patients.

She declined to say whether the breakthough meeting will make a difference in how China addresses AIDS.

"I hope the government will truthfully deal with the problem," said Gao.

"I don't know if it will help. The Henan officials who ran the blood-selling schemes are still in power. None have been punished and some have been promoted."

Henan officials have refused to help sufferers, despite Chinese and international media starting to report on the outbreak in 2000.

They have focused on stopping attempts by farmers seeking help by beating and detaining them and threatening those who go to Beijing.

Local authorities continue to chase journalists and volunteers, including Gao, from villages.

But Gao said her meeting with Wu may at the minimum make local authorities more cautious about harassing her.

They have forbidden her from travelling overseas to receive international awards for her efforts in educating farmers about AIDS and donating money and giving care to sufferers.

Henan reports that 11,844 people have been confirmed HIV-positive in the province, although activists and experts say it could be as high as one million.

China has been criticized for its slow response to a disease that has infected more than 800,000 people. Health agencies say China could have 10 million AIDS victims by 2010 if it fails to take the scourge seriously.

A total of 76 provincial health and finance bureau officials would fan out across Henan in pairs from Wednesday, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

Henan became the site of one of China's worst AIDS outbreaks when thousands of peasants were infected after selling their plasma and having HIV-infected blood pumped back into them. HIV is the virus that cases AIDS.

The officials were being sent to work in villages with high incidences of AIDS for one year to help improve prevention and treatment systems and strengthen infrastructure construction, Xinhua said.

They would supervise distribution of free medicine for carriers and provide free AIDS tests for villagers after receiving AIDS prevention training themselves, it said.

They would provide free education for orphans of victims and take care of elderly people who have lost their children to AIDS, Xinhua said.

In an unprecedented public show of support to fight the disease by a Chinese leader, Premier Wen Jiabao shook hands and chatted with AIDS patients at a Beijing hospital last December.

Vice Premier Wu Yi visited Henan last December and vowed to punish anyone trying to conceal the disease.

Henan is one of China's most secretive provinces and has regularly arrested reporters trying to cover the AIDS story.

Activists and experts continue to cite local cover-ups of blood bank scandals plaguing entire villages, as well as newspaper stories that play down the plight of people.

Health Minister Wu Yi would head the group that will draft policies for AIDS prevention, coordinate related health issues and mobilize public resources, the official China Daily said,

A plan for the committee has been submitted to the State Council, or cabinet, and awaits final approval, it said.

Beijing has been criticized for its slow response to a disease that has infected more than 840,000 people across the country.

Health agencies say China could have 10 million AIDS victims by 2010 if it fails to take the scourge seriously and have said that it is one of three countries most at risk from AIDS after Africa. The other two are Russia and India.

Executive Deputy Health Minister Gao Qiang said last year that AIDS had not been controlled and the battle faced difficult hurdles.

National leaders have accorded AIDS prevention more of a priority in the last year. A total of 76 health officials were sent out across the AIDS-stricken province of Henan this week.

Henan was the scene for one of China's worst AIDS outbreaks when thousands of farmers were infected after selling their blood plasma and having HIV-infected blood pumped back into them. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

In an unprecedented public show of support by a Chinese leader for the fight against the disease, Premier Wen Jiabao shook hands and chatted with AIDS patients at a Beijing hospital last December.

Wu Yi, who is also a vice premier, visited Henan in December and vowed to punish anyone trying to conceal the disease. Henan is one of China's most secretive and most populous provinces and has regularly arrested reporters trying to cover the AIDS story.

The funding, to be coordinated through USAID's new regional development mission for Asia, will support programs in China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, the embassy said in a statement.

"These programs include efforts aimed at halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, protecting the environment, protecting vulnerable populations and promoting economic growth and democracy," it said.

The opening of the office was finalized under an economic and technical cooperation agreement between Thailand and the US signed by Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai and US Ambassador Darryl Johnson.

While the USAID's bilateral assistance program in Thailand ended in 1995, "USAID never really went away," Johnson said at the signing ceremony.

"In the intervening years, the US and Thailand have continued to work together on a wide variety of important topics" including "responding to the needs of refugees and other displaced persons and reacting to the Asian financial crisis," the envoy said.

USAID, with missions in more than 100 countries and a total budget for fiscal year 2004 of 10.2 billion dollars, announced earlier this month it was providing 250,000 dollars in aid to the World Health Organisation to assist in combatting the current bird flu crisis ravaging parts of Asia.

The agency's largest current mission is in Iraq, where it has spent 2.1 billion dollars since Saddam Hussein's regime fell last April.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia announced it would donate 25 million dollars (19.97 million US) over the next three years to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the contribution was in addition to the government's six-year 200 million dollar global HIV/AIDS initiative launched four years ago.

The fund's executive director Richard Feachem said Australia was recognized as a world leader in fighting HIV/AIDS and hoped its decision to join the fund would encourage other countries to do the same.

"We collectively in the rich countries have not adequately yet appreciated the global devastation that HIV/AIDS is causing," Feachem told reporters.

"If you go to the countries of southern Africa, you'll see these countries imploding because of HIV/AIDS.

"Three African heads of state have predicted that their countries will cease to exist as organized nation states if this epidemic continues."

CANBERRA (Reuters) - The world is losing the battle against AIDS and must pour in more funds to combat the scourge, the head of a global fund fighting the disease said on Wednesday.

"We are beginning to come to terms with the magnitude of this horror, but only beginning, and we have a way to go," said Richard Feachem, executive director of the United Nations-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The United Nations and the G8 group of rich nations set up the fund in 2001 as a kind of global war chest for the battle against the three big infectious diseases.

"We collectively in the rich countries have not adequately yet appreciated the global devastation that HIV-AIDS is causing," said Feachem, who was in Australia to accept a pledge of A$25 million ($20 million) from the government.

He said some countries in southern Africa were imploding because of the disease. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

A U.N. organization, UNAIDS, estimates that around 26.6 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected. South Africa has the highest number of victims in the world, with estimated infections of 5.3 million among its population of 45 million.

"If you look at the world today we are losing the battle rapidly," Feachem told a news conference. "What the Global Fund is doing is financing the beginnings of a huge counter attack, but this huge counter attack is only just beginning to roll out."

Australia's pledge of A$25 million to the fund will be spread over three years. In 2000, the government also committed A$600 million to a separate global AIDS initiative.

"HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are serious public health issues, not just in our region but around the world, and act as a major impediment to development," Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the news conference.

Since the Global Fund was established three years ago it has received $5.3 billion in finance from around the world, which has been used to fund 225 programs in 121 countries such as community clinics, training health workers and education.

Feachem said the organization needs to raise $1.6 billion to fund its 2004 programs. About 20 percent of its finances go to the Asia Pacific region, where it estimates around 7.5 million people are infected with the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

 

UN Says Russia Must Fight AIDS

Tue Feb 17,11:36 AM ET

By Tom Miles

MOSCOW (Reuters) - AIDS could cost Russia 20 million lives and 14 percent of its economic gross domestic product (GDP) by 2045 if it does not fight the virus, now growing faster in the region than anywhere in the world, a U.N. study published on Tuesday said.

The study by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) said about one in 100 Russian adults carry the virus, one of the highest infection rates in the 28 East European states examined.

The study examined three possible paths the epidemic could take and found the severest case--with adult infection rates reaching eight percent--could cost 20.7 million Russian lives and 14 percent of GDP by 2045.

Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UNDP, said the key to beating the epidemic was political leadership, which is slow in coming from the region's governments. Russia's Health Ministry has only one official dedicated to fighting the disease.

"President (Vladimir) Putin mentioned it last May, but one speech is not enough and one reference in a speech is not enough," he told a news conference.

He said AIDS should be regarded as a kind of "public health terrorism."

"There has to be strong political leadership time after time to warn Russians that this is a threat...With this one-percent infection rate, all the epidemiologists will tell you, you are close to the trigger of a major expansion," he said.

Kalman Mizsei, the UNDP's director for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), said South Africa had a one-percent infection rate in its adult population 12 years ago, but the number is now 20 times higher.

"It is already too late to speak of avoiding a crisis in Eastern Europe and the CIS," he said in a statement accompanying the report.

The report estimated 1.8 million people are infected with the HIV in the countries it studied in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with new infection rates highest in Russia, Estonia and Ukraine.

It cited Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as examples of countries that have halted or reversed the spread of the disease, but said a high infection rate in Estonia shows that economic growth does not necessarily mean beating the epidemic. The report called for a better balance between treatment and criminalization of drug-users, whom it said were fueling the disease and accounted for more than 70 percent of new infections in the CIS in 2001-2002.

It said the disease is prevalent in the region's prisons, which are acting as incubators for the virus. Russia has one of the world's largest prison populations.

Russia's army and areas with mining and oil industries also have especially high rates of the disease.

Thursday, February 19, 2004 · Last updated 6:52 p.m. PT

E-mail used to alert of STD exposure

By DANIEL YEE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

ATLANTA -- Fighting fire with fire, public health officials are using e-mail to try to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among people who meet through Internet chat rooms and Web sites.

In a pilot program in Los Angeles County, health officials use e-mail and the Internet to notify the sex partners of people who had been diagnosed with STDS.

San Francisco's Health Department is believed to be the only other agency to use e-mail in this way, said Dr. Pragna Patel of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released a case study Thursday on the Los Angeles County project.

"Using e-mail has been a helpful and good alternative when you have otherwise anonymous sex partners," Patel said. "More and more the Internet is serving as a place to meet sex partners and engage in risky behavior."

Tracking STD cases among people who have met in chat rooms is difficult because people often take part anonymously. Health officials often do not have names, addresses or other information to work with.

In other parts of the country, health officials post prevention messages on Web sites used by gay and bisexual men to meet each other. But e-mail is not used. Instead, health officials use regular mail or contact people in person to tell them that they may have been exposed.

"I think when we are in a war to save life then we have to use any means necessary to get the means out," said Sandra Singleton McDonald, who runs an Atlanta AIDS program and is on the President's Advisory Committee on HIV and AIDS.

In Los Angeles, the need to curb STDs and promote prevention is crucial: The county recently reported its first increase in new AIDS cases in a decade.

The number of cases rose a half-percent from 1,555 to 1,562 between 2001 and 2002, according to preliminary figures from the county Department of Health Services. The increase was entirely among men, whose cases jumped by 1.6 percent. The number of new cases reported among women declined.

In addition, the county reported that nearly a quarter of 759 gay and bisexual men who had syphilis had used the Internet to meet sex partners between 2001 and 2003.

In the case study, health officials described a man diagnosed with syphilis in 2002 who said he had 134 male sex partners in a six-month period. County officials sent e-mails to 111 of the partners to alert them that they may have been exposed to an STD. A quarter of those people contacted the health department.

In a second case, a 31-year-old man tested positive for syphilis last March and provided the county with 16 e-mail addresses of recent partners. Nearly half of the partners made arrangements with health officials to be tested.

SOFIA (AFP) - Prosecutors in Libya called for the death sentence for seven health workers, six Bulgarian and one Palestinian, accused of spreading AIDS in a children's hospital in the northern Libyan town of Benghazi, Bulgarian radio reported.

The state stood by its charge that two doctors -- one Palestinian and one Bulgarian -- and five Bulgarian nurses infected 426 children in a Benghazi hospital with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, with tainted blood products.

Libyan medical experts have testified that 43 of the children who were allegedly infected by the accused with tainted blood products, have already died of AIDS.

The defence is relying on testimony by Luc Montagnier -- the French doctor who first isolated the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) -- that the epidemic had broken out in the hospital before the arrival of the accused.

He blamed the epidemic on poor hygiene.

The accused have been held for five years.

For the first time since the start of their long-running trial representatives from Amnesty International were present in court on Monday, along with representatives from the nine European embassies in Libya.

Last week Robert Bradtke, the US deputy secretary of state, said in Sofia that the six Bulgarians accused "should be freed as soon as possible."

Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said the first batch had arrived in Africa's most populous country and was being distributed to the 25 HIV/AIDS treatment centers, many of which ran out of supplies in September.

He blamed the shortage on "over-enrolment of patients" in a pilot program and a lack of money.

In 2002 Nigeria launched Africa's biggest AIDS control program aimed at distributing cheap generic drugs from India to an initial 10,000 adults and 5,000 children at a subsidized monthly cost of 1,000 naira ($7) per person.

UNAIDS and health ministry figures indicate that around 3.5 million of Nigeria's 130 million people have the HIV virus.

At a news conference in the capital Abuja, Lambo said the fresh supplies, costing 500 million naira ($3.7 million), should last 11 months but that the government was trying to widen the pilot project.

Campaigners and HIV patients have complained their treatment was threatened by a shortage of the drugs that are designed to give a longer lease on life.

Many HIV carriers have resorted to the open market where the drugs cost many times more. In the oil-rich country two-thirds of people live on less than $1 a day.

Prime Minister Themba Dlamini made the declaration -- the first since 1992 -- on Wednesday and announced that the disaster had been gazetted, the Times of Swaziland reported Thursday.

Dlamini told the paper: "The kingdom of Swaziland is seriously facing a humanitarian crisis that stems from three adjoining fundamental trends, namely drought and land degradation, increasing poverty and HIV/AIDS.

"The combination of these trends and severity of the situation leave no doubt in my mind that the kingdom of Swaziland is indeed in a desperate scenario, which requires urgent national and international intervention," he said.

The tiny kingdom, wedged between South Africa and Mozambique, has suffered its fourth successive year of drought, combined with a serious problem of AIDS, which affects about 38.6 percent of the adult population, according to the latest government figures.

Dlamini, who had concluded a tour of the hardest-hit eastern areas said: "Indeed the situation is bad. The continuing drought and lack of rain have prevented many planting their fields."

"The deadly combination of HIV/AIDS and poverty has produced a novel situation that has increased the vulnerability of families," Dlamini said.

Sarah Laughton, the UN World Food Programme's (WFP) emergency co-ordinator in Swaziland, said the organisation estimated that around one in five people were in need of aid.

"The situation has definitely worsened since October last year, when people were still hopeful about the rain. What happened is in December and January is that it had become clear that the rains were not sufficient," she told AFP.

"People are resilient, but their ability to cope has been severely stretched."

She said the WFP welcomed the declaration, as some donors had been waiting for such a declaration before deciding on giving more aid.

"You would expect donors to make further contributions," she said.

Laughton added the WFP was pleased that the government had linked the crisis to HIV/AIDS.

"Drought is not the only issue. We are very pleased that he (Dlamini) acknowledged that. It's appropriate."

The WFP distributes food at 179 points around the country on a monthly basis in the form of a package that includes maize, beans, oil and a high-protein corn-soya blend, specifically targeted toward HIV/AIDS sufferers.

Swaziland's agricultural ministry said in December it needed to import some 86,000 tonnes of maize this year, more than half the 148,900 tonnes needed to feed its population of around 1.1 million people.

Farmers have run out of maize stocks as a result of poor harvests.

Some 217,000 Swazis already depend on the food aid provided by WFP and the government.

"We are expecting the Brazilian mission this month so that we can study the issue together, including working out the details of the project," Health Minister Francisco Songane told AFP.

Songane said an anti-retroviral drugs factory was necessary not only for Mozambique but also for neighbouring states where the pandemic is taking a devastating toll.

In Africa south of the Sahara, around 26.6 million people were infected with HIV at the end of 2003, out of an estimated global tally of 40 million, according to the latest UN estimates.

Around 2.3 million Africans died from AIDS during 2003, and at least three million more Africans became infected.

In a recent visit to Mozambique, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva promised Mozambicans his government would immediately start mobilising funds for the 20-million-dollar factory.

Mozambique, with a population of 17 million, has an adult HIV prevalence rate of 16 percent with 700 new infections daily.