China, US join hands to combat AIDS
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-05-29 09:45

The United States on Friday promised to invest 15 million yuan (US$1.8 million) in China's Henan Province within five years to help the province deal with AIDS.

The program, as part of the Global AIDS Program/China (GAP), is sponsored by the US government and implemented by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

"China still has a small and shrinking window of opportunity to prevent AIDS from reaching catastrophic proportions provided that China response both urgently and forcefully to moving disaster," said US Ambassador to China Clark T. Randt at a brief ceremony in Wenlou, one of the villages most severely affected by HIV/AIDS.

"The launching of the GAP program in Henan is particularly significant, because Henan is one of the provinces hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic," he said.

According to the provincial Health Bureau, the first HIV/AIDS case in Henan was reported in 1995. By the end of March 2004, the province reported 14,505 HIV carriers, including 6,773 patients, in 38 poverty-stricken villages. Most of the people got infected through illegal or inappropriate blood collection during the mid- 1990s.

The ambassador said the program will mainly focus on developing a training program for local HIV/AIDS health workers,improving the efficacy of the on-going anti-viral drug distribution efforts, accelerating the surveillance of HIV/AIDS case detection mechanisms to further reduce transmission, and providing support to families affected by HIV/AIDS.

"The partnership between China's central government, provincial government and the United States government in the GAP program is a reflection of China's strong commitment to address the HIV crisis in China," he said.

Liu Xuezhou, deputy director of the provincial Health Bureau, said the financial input from the central and provincial governments on AIDS has been increasing significantly in recent years.

"In 2003, the central and provincial governments jointly spent over 100 million yuan in Henan for AIDS prevention and control," he said.

What the province needs most currently is "technological support and staff training." "I am glad the GAP program could offer help in this regard," he said.

Official figures show that the estimated number of HIV carriers in China is 840,000, among whom 80,000 are patients.

The GAP/China program, initiated in China on May 2 this year, is aimed to provide technological and financial support on AIDS campaign to ten Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, including Beijing, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Guangdong, Henan, Anhui, Heilongjiang, Guizhou and Tibet.

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