As former US President Bill Clinton?shook hands with
21-year-old HIV carrier Song Pengfei at an HIV/AIDS summit
yesterday in Beijing, he thanked Song.
"I want to thank you for standing up and announcing in front of
all these people that you were infected," said Clinton, who has
used his influence to push for the global prevention and control of
AIDS since he left the Oval Office.
"You have done a big favor for everybody in this room and for
this country today by having the courage to stand up and say what
you did, and I thank you," he said to Song, who announced at the
event he is a HIV-infected and then directed questions to Clinton
at Tsinghua
University's International Summit on AIDS and SARS.
Lack of HIV/AIDS education has been a major cause of the spread
of the disease.
"AIDS? I know it is deadly. How does it spread and how to
prevent it? I don't know," said Gao Weiqiang, a young
farmer-turned-worker at a construction site just outside the
university as Clinton finished speaking.
Tsinghua's students, and millions of others in China, are
fortunate because they receive prevention information, event
officials said.
Education and health officials have conducted HIV/AIDS education
campaigns in schools and in urban areas.
However, Gao and his dozens of colleagues at the construction
site - as well as China's 90 million migrant people- are rarely
touched by awareness campaigns.
Moreover, in rural and remote areas, there are nearly 900
million residents and about 80 per cent of China's HIV/AIDS
victims, and laggard development and poor government support have
not helped matters.
(China Daily November 11, 2003)