Steve Quayle News Alerts

July 12, 2002

BARCELONA, Spain, — In a nation where at least 800,000 people are estimated to be infected with the virus that causes AIDS, an overwhelming number of Chinese do not know that HIV causes the disease, how the virus spreads or how to prevent infection, a new national survey shows.

NEARLY one in five Chinese have never even heard of AIDS, according to the study, presented here this week at the International AIDS Conference.
Coming on the heels of a United Nations report that concluded that China is on the brink of an explosive HIV epidemic — with infections projected to soar to 10 million by the end of the decade — the findings are particularly alarming, said Dr. Ron Valdiserri, deputy HIV chief at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which helped analyze data collected by the Chinese government.
“We are very, very concerned because of the potential for dramatic spread of HIV in China,” Valdiserri told MSNBC.com.

Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, agreed. He pointed to his agency’s report, released in late June: “Millions of Chinese have never heard the word AIDS. Many still think that one can contract HIV from mosquito bites or from shaking hands. [In some villages], the greater part of the population is infected.”
The good news, Valdiserri said, is that the Chinese government is now very concerned and is working with the United States, other governments and donor agencies to address the situation.
For years, the Chinese government had denied any AIDS problem. Its official data shows that as of last year, just 30,736 people were carrying the AIDS virus, 1,594 had full-blown AIDS and 684 people had died from illnesses related to the disease.
The U.N. report, though, said that those numbers vastly underestimated the true reach of the epidemic; that as of last year, between 800,000 and 1.5 million people carried the AIDS virus.
Even before the report was issued, there was a wake-up call last summer when state media exposed the rampant spread of HIV in rural Henan province. Large numbers of villagers contracted the virus from the unsanitary blood-buying business of unscrupulous merchants, said Eric Baculinao, an NBC producer based in Beijing.
“The shock waves reached Beijing’s top leadership and, among the measures taken, China increased sevenfold its funding for HIV control, from a previous $1.7 million to the present $12.4 million,” Baculinao said. “And some $114 million in bonds has been issued to standardize its blood-banks.”
Chinese officials have also asked the CDC to visit Beijing later this year to serve as advisers in setting up prevention programs, Valdiserri said.
Nevertheless, many AIDS activists are not satisfied by these steps, arguing that more funding is necessary, Baculinao said.

NBC Q&A on China AIDS crisis
The new survey, said to be the first major analysis of HIV knowledge among the country’s general population, enrolled more than 7,000 randomly selected Chinese residents ages 15 to 49.

Among the findings:
Nearly 17 percent had never heard of AIDS.
Of those who had heard of AIDS, nearly three in four did not know HIV causes AIDS. About nine in 10 did not know that HIV could be detected through testing.
Two in three did not know condoms can protect against AIDS. Even more didn’t know that sharing needles could spread HIV.
More than eight in 10 didn’t know that an infected mother could transmit the virus to her unborn baby.

Charlene Laino is Executive Health Editor of MSNBC.com. Eric Baculinao, an NBC producer based in Beijing, contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/779336.asp