By Juliana Liu

SHUANG MIAO, China (Reuters) - Popping two pills a day to stave off AIDS symptoms helps Chinese wheat farmer Tan Zhiyun delay the inevitable -- suicide.

Tan was diagnosed HIV positive in 2000 along with hundreds of neighbors in the poverty-stricken village of Shuang Miao in the central province of Henan. Some have already killed themselves rather than wait for death.

"Given a choice between hanging myself or eating pesticides, I'd prefer to hang myself," said the 51-year-old, swaddled in four layers of clothing despite the warm spring weather.

"Suicide is my only way. It might be a little sooner or a little later, but I'll have to do it some day," he said, resting on his side next to wife Wang Xianlin, also HIV positive.

The two are among an estimated 900 HIV sufferers in a village of only 3,800 people, about one third of whom had sold blood regularly to buy goods such as color TVs, fertilizer and schooling for their children.

Experts say up to three million people in Henan alone sold their blood to unsanitary clinics, many of them state-sponsored, throughout the 1990s in what they call the worst medically caused HIV epidemic in the world.

But after years of living in the shadows, gagged by village and provincial officials fearful of public scrutiny, China's AIDS victims are demanding recognition and free treatment to make their remaining days more comfortable.

China's leaders, keen to maintain social stability and brisk economic growth, said public health would be a key issue during the annual session of the National People's Congress, or parliament, which opened March 5.

VIGILANCE

Premier Wen Jiabao, burnishing his "Man of the People" image, said the public health system must be strengthened to deal with communicable diseases.

"We need to maintain a high degree of vigilance and take firm and effective measures to control SARS, AIDS, schistomiasis," he told lawmakers.

International health agencies say AIDS could infect 10 million Chinese by 2010 if unchecked, dwarfing the higher-profile SARS and avian flu outbreaks.

Government officials had promised to provide poor HIV sufferers with free effective drugs, free blood tests and free treatment. But peasants living in hundreds of "AIDS villages" in Henan say real benefits have yet to trickle down to them.

With no paved roads or running water, Shuangmiao is a typical Henan village untouched by China's economic juggernaut. Villagers saw the chance to sell blood as their one shot at a better life.

Clinics paid farmers to extract their blood plasma, then pumped the unused components back into the donor from a pool tainted with blood from other people. Blood was returned so that donors could give repeatedly.

More than 1,200 people in Shuangmiao regularly sold their blood for about $5 per visit, said Zhu Jingzhong, an HIV positive farmer who emerged as an informal leader after AIDS hit the village in 2000.

"It was like an atomic bomb went off," he said, puffing on a cigarette and gazing at a dozen children playing in his yard, orphans he had taken in after their parents died of AIDS.

"Villagers started dying at the same time. Some committed suicide when they found out. People stopped buying our vegetables and wheat. Youngsters in the village had a hard time finding marriage partners," he said.

BLACK MARKET DRUGS

Farmer Tan said he was on the verge of committing suicide three months ago when his family bought the retroviral Triomune, made by Indian generic drugs firm Cipla, for about $60 a bottle on the black market.

But family members said they had spent all their savings and even gone into debt to buy the exorbitantly priced drug, which would run out in about five days, prompting Tan to consider suicide again.

Villagers said free boxes of generic retroviral drugs made by Shanghai Desano Biopharmaceutical Co Ltd were handed out with great fanfare by officials last June. But about two-thirds of patients stopped taking medication due to severe side effects, they said.

Activists were outraged, saying Desano's drugs were never tested on humans before being distributed and highlighted the government's incompetence in tackling AIDS in a region where condoms are rare.

"We are just beginning to see that a vast majority of people find the side effects too painful to continue," said Wan Yanhai, director of the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Health Education, who spent months in jail for daring to speak out about the virus.

A spokeswoman for Desano said human trials were not needed before the drug's January 2003 launch because it was a generic copy. Regulators asked the firm to start clinical tests this year, she said, declining to specify why.

Qi Xiaoqiu, a director general at the Health Ministry's department of disease control, told Reuters the ministry was aware of problems with the free drug and was seeking a solution.

"We do plan to procure foreign-made retrovirals, but that will take some time," he said on the sidelines of the Global AIDS Program launch in Beijing.

But time may be running out for villagers like Tan and 37-year-old Zhu Longwei, once a sturdy farmer who now passes his days lying under a thick pile of blankets.

"I'm deteriorating quickly," he said in a barely audible voice as an intravenous drip delivered a mix of self-bought potions into his body.

MBABANE (Reuters) - Swaziland stands alone with the world's highest rate of HIV infection after nearby Botswana made headway against the deadly pandemic, the United Nations special envoy on AIDS Stephen Lewis said on Friday.

Sparsely populated Swaziland and Botswana have long been twinned with the highest rates of HIV infection although with 38.8 percent of adults infected, Botswana had slightly outstripped Swaziland at 38.6 percent.

But Lewis said on Friday Botswana had made progress in cutting its rate, while Swaziland's rate had stayed the same.

"Botswana has made a very strong claim that they have lowered their infection rate from 38.8 percent to 37.5 percent. That leaves Swaziland with the world's highest rate of HIV infection," Lewis told Reuters during a visit to the tiny southern African kingdom.

Swaziland and Botswana, with populations of one million and 1.7 million respectively, have long had the highest infection rates. Neighboring South Africa, with its much larger population, has the most individuals with HIV/AIDS at more than five million.

With backing from the United States and other key donors, diamond-rich Botswana has tackled AIDS head-on, leading the way in supplying free anti-retroviral drugs which help slow the onset of fullblown AIDS and reduce the chances of infection.

But Swaziland's King Mswati III and his government have attracted criticism for being slow to recognize the threat of AIDS and fight the spread of HIV.

Lewis used his three-day visit to brief Mswati, who declared a humanitarian disaster in February over a drought and the effects of HIV/AIDS.

"I'm not counseling action in the streets, but with HIV/AIDS you have to be forceful with political leaders. You can even be forceful with kings. You are fighting for your survival, for God's sake," Lewis said on Friday.

Lewis praised Swaziland's initial steps toward introducing anti-retrovirals and recommended further steps, such as offering blood tests to every user of medical facilities.

Lewis said he last visited Swaziland four years ago.

"Back then, 60 percent to 70 percent of the beds at Mbabane government hospital were filled with AIDS patients. Today, doctors said the figure is 90 percent. It is a manifestation of the havoc brought by the pandemic," Lewis said.

JOHANNESBURG, March 20 (Reuters) - South Africans spend more time at funerals than other activities outside work, a survey published on Saturday showed in a chilling reminder of the toll HIV/AIDS is taking on the country.

South Africa has more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other in the world -- with an estimated 5.3 million of its 45 million people infected. Activists estimate about 600 South Africans die of AIDS each day.

"Almost one in three of all South Africans have attended a funeral in the past month, which puts mourning as a way of spending non-working time ahead of visiting hair salons, going to the doctor, shopping for pleasure and even braaing (the popular pastime of BBQ-ing)," The Saturday Star newspaper said.

"And, while people may be attending burials regularly, it doesn't appear to be pushing them to seek solace from a higher power: attendance levels at services at churches, synagogues and mosques are dismally low," the newspaper said.

Some 16.8 percent of South Africans went to services at these places of worship in the past month, the survey showed.

South Africa's political parties have made the AIDS crisis a key issue in the run-up to elections next month that will mark the 10th anniversary of democratic rule in the country.

The ANC is virtually guaranteed a strong win in the April polls, but opposition parties hope that giving voice to deepening public anger over the AIDS crisis will be one way to reduce its margin of victory.

The All Media Products Survey twice a year interviews people who are representative of the make-up of the total population. Its combined sample in 2003 was just over 25,000.

LAGOS (AFP) - Abuja, the Nigerian capital, has the highest incidence of cases of HIV/AIDS in the country, authorities in the city said, according to an official statement released.

He said the government will continue to provide treatment, care and support to people living with the disease, adding that it hopes to achieve more than 80 percent local production of generic drug needs within the next three years.

DAR ES SALAAM (AFP) - Tanzania's National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) has called for increased donor assistance to replenish stocks of condoms, saying a looming shortage could adversely affect campaigns against HIV/AIDS.

BANGALORE, India, (AFP) - As he downs a pitcher of beer at a downtown pub in this southern Indian techology hub, Mrinal Kotia is blissfully unaware that his regular watering hole is part of an experiment to curb AIDS.

LUSAKA (AFP) - Zambia banned the distribution of condoms in schools, started as part of a drive to combat the country's alarming HIV/AIDS problem, saying it was promoting immorality and pre-marital sex.

"We can't continue living in denial. We need to protect the young from this deadly disease," said Nkandu Luo, a former health minister turned AIDS activist.