Last week, the People's Daily visited one of the villages in central China's Henan Province that has been worst-hit by HIV/AIDS, and reported on Tuesday that its death rate has now almost returned to normal.
Five years ago, some families in the village of Wenlou, Shangcai County had to hold several funerals on a single day. According to the provincial health bureau, 1,427 villagers sold their blood before 1995, 431 of whom have been confirmed HIV positive. Fifty-two of them have died and 337 others in 303 households, 33 percent of the village's total, have AIDS.
In 2003, Shangcai was listed among the country's first 51 demonstration zones for AIDS prevention and treatment. That year the provincial government sent working teams to 38 priority villages, including Wenlou, assigning each village seven staff.
At the 2005 International Symposium on Official Development Assistance for Population and Development in Suzhou on October 27, Vice Minister of Health Wang Longde said the 830 million yuan (US$103 million) spent combating AIDS in 2004 would be topped both this year and next.
On October 24, the People's Daily interviewed one villager with AIDS as she worked in her field. Apparently in good health, she said she grew garlic, ginger, cabbage and other vegetables not only for her own family, but also to sell at the county market every day.
Liu Yuemei, secretary of the village Communist Party of China committee, said the woman was named Zhang and aged 53. In March 2004 she began to show symptoms of AIDS and, after a fever, was on the verge of death and could neither eat nor drink. Her family even prepared a tomb site for her.
After being prescribed antiretroviral drugs, Zhang recovered and can now work in her field three to four hours a day.
Wang Peiren, head of the working team assigned by the provincial health bureau, told the People's Daily that although the village has a high number of people with HIV/AIDS, its death rate is now close to normal.
There is an 800-square-meter health center in Wenlou, which has 40 beds and is equipped with ultrasound and X-ray machines, an electrocardiograph and other instruments. Presently, all patients have access to free treatment for opportunistic infections and antiretroviral drugs. More than 100 drugs are available to fight opportunistic infections.
There are now over 200 supervisors in Shangcai supporting patients in their drug treatment, and Wenlou alone has more than ten. The supervisors are patients themselves who have responded well to treatment, and each helps 20 others and visits them twice a day, bringing medicines and making sure they take them.
The number of antiretroviral doses taken in the county has risen from 100 in the year 2002 to 3,422. Most people taking them have improved and some have recovered well enough to do light manual work, while the death rate has fallen drastically. More than 300 patients who did not adapt to antiretroviral drugs have been given traditional Chinese medicine.
Progress has also been made in preventing HIV infection, especially in mother-to-baby transmission.
The People's Daily also spoke to a villager named Caixia and met her two-year old son. Both Caixia and her husband have AIDS, and when she got pregnant in the spring of 2002, she was afraid her baby might become infected too.
However, she wanted to have a child and had learned of the mother-to-baby AIDS prevention program at the county's People's Hospital, so she took part in the drug treatment and, eighteen months after being born, her son tested negative.
Presently, the provincial government has a preferential policy for HIV positive pregnant women who choose to undergo prevention treatment: their delivery costs are reduced or remitted and their babies get free milk in the first 18 months after birth.
All 94 of the pregnant women who have been confirmed positive at the hospital, out of the 13,158 tested since October 2001, have received prevention treatment. Of the 28 babies born to them now over eighteen months old, 27 have tested negative.
(China.org.cn by Wind Gu, November 4, 2005)
