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Lifting the stigma
Li Li
WHEN Premier Wen Jiabao visited the AIDS ward at Ditan Hospital of
Beijing and shook hands with three AIDS patients on December 1, World
AIDS Day, 2003, it was the first time that a Chinese premier had met
with AIDS patients on a public occasion. The unprecedented move was seen
by the world as a symbolic display of government commitment to fighting
the disease.
On the eve of this year’s World AIDS Day, Wen paid his second visit to
Shangcai County of Henan Province, which has one of China’s highest AIDS
incidences due to illegal blood deals in the 1990s. Hands were shaken,
dumplings were eaten and vegetable sales were promoted. In Wenlou
Village, Wen learned that the people’s traditional vegetable farming had
been hampered by sluggish sales due to some buyers’ suspicions of
“HIV-poisoned” vegetables. He told villagers half-jokingly, “You can
tell them that the premier has eaten Wenlou’s vegetables today.”
If there is any reason to smile amid China’s AIDS crisis, it is the
encouraging figures of the Joint Assessment of HIV/AIDS Prevention,
Treatment and Care in China (2007), released by the State Council AIDS
Working Committee Office and the UN Theme Group on AIDS in China on
November 29. According to the report, China will have an estimated
50,000 new infections in 2007, compared with 70,000 in 2005; and among
the 700,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in China, over 40,000 had
received antiretroviral treatment by the end of October. Of the 50,000
new infections this year, 44.7 percent will be through heterosexual
transmission, 12.2 percent from men having sex with men, and 42 percent
from intravenous drug use (IDU), the report said.
In the past, more than half the infections were caused by IDU. The
changing picture in China is in line with the international trend of
major HIV transmission modes, which is gradually shifting from IDU to
unsafe sex, Health Minister Chen Zhu noted.
Vulnerable group
The day before International AIDS Day, officials from several government
ministries were invited to an online broadcast discussion at
Xinhuanet.com.cn on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS among rural
laborers working in cities, which has been identified by the Chinese
Government as a group particularly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection in
recent years. Of China’s 120 million farmers who have migrated to cities
to find employment, the majority are aged between 20 and 40 and have
only received middle school education or lower.
“Different from the majority of married people, migrant workers mostly
live far away from their spouses. When their sexual needs cannot be
satisfied, they are inclined to pay for sex. We should always bear their
special situation in mind when talking about the sexual transmission of
HIV/AIDS in China,” said Zhang Jian, a senior official of the National
Population and Family Planning Commission.
At the end of 2005, the State Council ordered over 10 government
departments to launch a national campaign for educating migrant workers
about AIDS transmission. One goal of the program, which will last until
the end of 2010, is to supply over 85 percent of migrant workers with
the necessary knowledge to protect themselves against AIDS. Positive
progress in this national campaign has been achieved over the last two
years. According to Zhang, more than 6,000 new organizations nationwide
have specialized in publicizing AIDS prevention knowledge to migrant
workers.
The Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GBC), a non-governmental
organization aimed at leveraging the power of the business community to
fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics worldwide, set up its
China advisory committee in April. During the weeklong May Day holiday,
the China advisory committee spent a donation of 400,000 yuan ($54,000)
from eight companies on printing poker cards with information about
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria on the back. Chinese volunteers for
GBC, mainly college students, distributed 10,000 sets of poker cards to
migrant workers at a railway station in Beijing. The GBC China advisory
committee donated the remaining 30,000 sets of poker cards to the
Beijing Municipal Health Bureau, which promised to deliver these poker
cards as education material to migrant workers at construction sites
throughout the city.
Zheng Wenkai, an official from the Ministry of Agriculture, told the
online discussion that since the beginning of the national campaign,
over 20 million migrant workers had received basic vocational training
before traveling to cities, which included information on AIDS
prevention. Zheng said his ministry had also tried to educate the
farming population on AIDS so that they can educate family members who
work in cities when they come back for family reunions.
Despite the progress, it is too early for China to be conceited. Zhang
said his commission had conducted polls on migrant workers on their
knowledge of HIV/AIDS, which showed that it remains insufficient in
general and less than that of farmers. He proposed a solution that
migrant workers should be given more holidays to meet their families.
Although the Chinese Government has been promoting the use of condoms as
a vital means to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission, programs of distributing
free condoms in entertainment venues in many Chinese cities have been
aborted by public criticism that it is an unspoken confirmation of
prostitution. Until recently, police departments at all levels had taken
condoms as proof of illegal sex activity in entertainment venues, which
dampened the use of condoms in the sex trade. According to national
surveillance figures, the rate of regular condom use among China’s
prostitutes rose from 14.7 percent in 2001 to 41.4 percent in 2006.
Affordable medication
At the end of 2003, the Central Government adopted a “four exemptions,
one care” policy as a long-term strategy to fight HIV/AIDS.
This policy states that rural and urban AIDS patients who are not
covered by basic medical insurance and are in financial difficulty can
receive free antiretroviral drugs and treatment from designated
hospitals; people can get free counseling and HIV antibody tests at
local disease control centers or designated medical institutions;
pregnant women who carry the HIV virus can get counseling, prenatal
guidance and delivery service at designated hospitals and free
medication to cut mother-to-child HIV transmission; local governments
are obliged to pay for the cost of psychological therapy and nine-year
education for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS; and governments at all
levels should earmark money for funds to support AIDS patients and their
families who are in financial difficulty.
The Chinese Government has also started to provide free prevention and
treatment of HIV-related opportunistic infections in some provinces to
protect people with advanced HIV against infections and malignancies due
to their weakened immune system. Non-governmental organizations are also
contributing to the cause. According to the latest AIDS report, over
36,000 HIV carriers and AIDS patients in China had received treatment
sponsored by programs of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria by the end of June.
China’s top food and drug agency is streamlining approval procedures for
importing drugs to treat the estimated 85,000 patients in the country
suffering from full-blown AIDS. Zhang Wei, Director with the Drug
Registration Department of the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA),
said a streamlined approval method has been adopted for imports of drugs
that show significant clinical effects in treating diseases such as AIDS
and cancer. A regulation on drug approval was also amended in July
making procedures more transparent and efficient, which could see
certain procedures going faster in special cases.
It costs 120 working days to register an AIDS drug compared with 150 for
most others, Zhang said. Approval for the import of TDF, a key drug in
the second line of anti-retroviral treatment also known as the cocktail
therapy for AIDS, is currently under way and is expected to be completed
in time, he said. The United States-based Gliead, the drug’s developer,
filed the required application in August, said Zhang.
So far, only seven kinds of AIDS drugs mainly prescribed for first-line
anti-retroviral treatment are available in China. About 10 percent of
patients on first-line treatment, however, develop resistance after
taking the drugs for one year and have to switch to second-line drugs to
survive, said Hao Yao, Deputy Director with the Disease Control
Department of the Health Ministry.
To reduce the drug resistance also faced by AIDS patients in other
countries, Hao strongly urged Chinese patients to stick to their
treatment as many kinds of drugs in the second-line cocktail treatment
such as TDF are still unavailable here and have to be imported from
foreign countries.
“We are aware of the pressing issues and are considering further
measures and policies,” Zhang said.
(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles
Exchange Item)
Politicising Gaza
Ramzy Baroud
THE intense debate over Gaza is subsiding as the status quo is,
predictably, delineated by those with the bigger guns. But to what
extent can human suffering be politicised, turned into an intellectual
polemic that fails to affect the simplest change in people’s lives?
Hamas’ political advent in January 2006 as the first ‘opposition’
movement in the Arab world to ascend to power using peaceful and
democratic means was successfully thwarted in a brazen coup, engineered
jointly by the United States, Israel and renegade Palestinians
factionalists. Following this, history was, as usual, re-written by the
victor. Thus Hamas, a party representing the democratic institutions in
the Occupied Territories, became the party that ‘overthrew’ Abbas’
‘legitimate’ democracy. As strange a notion as that is — a government
overthrowing itself — it went down in the annals of Western media as
uncontested truth.
All parties involved, directly or otherwise, were expected to determine
their position from this fallacious claim, and they did so to meet their
own interests. Some had little problem in disowning Palestinian
democracy altogether. The United States government, Israel, the European
Union, and various non-democratic Arab governments were delighted by the
outcome of Palestinian infighting. They celebrated Abbas and his faction
as the true and legitimate democrats, and chastised those who disagreed.
Countries such as Russia, South Africa and some Arab Gulf states
followed suit, with some hesitation and disgruntlement, but too weak or
indecisive to confront the status quo. On the Palestinian front, the
choices were harder, but nonetheless those who were previously aligned
neither to Fatah nor Hamas now positioned themselves quickly on the side
that served them best. Renowned Leftists, for example, who normally
spoke as though they were representatives of the voice of reason, now
couldn’t risk losing what few ineffective NGOs they operated in a
management style more reminiscent of ‘grocery stores’ (the actual name
that many Palestinians use to mock many of the NGOs in their midst).
Fear of losing freedom of movement and access to US and European
financial institutions motivated many Palestinians to disown Gaza
completely. The sympathy millions of people worldwide felt towards the
perpetually suffering Gazens translated mostly in the realm of the
intangible. Helplessness prevailed and quickly joined the prevalent
sense of powerlessness and incapacity long affiliated with Palestine in
general and Gaza in particular. To distract from this issue, Abbas and
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were hurriedly rushed to Annapolis
for a badly needed photo-op. Exalted by the self-proclaimed champion of
democracy, President Bush, both leaders are on a new quest for peace.
The US-sponsored sideshow has achieved its aim. Dates such as January
2006 among others are now completely cast aside; new dates, new rhetoric
and new promises are replacing the old ones; all eyes are now on Abbas
and Olmert, Ramallah and Tel Aviv, with calls for future conferences and
painful compromises. And Gaza is becoming a forgotten or irrelevant
footnote.
The strip is under a harsh and unprecedented siege, with people dying as
a result of lack of medical aid. Israel has cut diesel supplies to
60,000 litres, when 350,000 litres are required daily. How can an
already underdeveloped economy run on such a meagre amount of energy,
let alone hospitals and schools? Electricity is also being drastically
cut, as per recommendations of Israel’s High Court and unemployment is
at the highest it has ever been (past the 75 per cent mark). About 1.5
million inhabitants are literally trapped in a 365 square kilometre
without any breathing room whatsoever, little food, little energy and,
worse yet, are told, more or less, that they deserve their fate. If the
media mentions Gaza at all, it does so in a politicised context. For
example: three militants killed by Israeli missiles; Israeli army says
militants were on their way to fire rockets into Israel; Hamas leader
remains defiant, and so on. Much of the coverage is now focused only on
augmenting the sins of Hamas, whereby every single conduct or misconduct
is blown out of proportion. The bottom line is that whatever suffering
Gazens endure, it is caused by the Hamas militant menace and their
‘forces of darkness’. Whether Hamas’ violations of human rights are at
all related to the state of siege, murder and chaos created by the many
circumstances that preceded it, remains completely irrelevant. Gaza has
become the needed leading precept for Palestinians, and others,
reminding them of what they cannot dare do if they want to be spared the
same fate. Palestinians in the West Bank are being asked to contrast the
images of angry, bearded Hamas police officers cracking down on
protesters with the soft-spoken bespectacled Abbas in international
conferences brimming with healthy, overfed faces.—Khaleej Times
Bali talks on climate: Don’t feel disheartened
Gwynne Dyer
DO not be downhearted about
the outcome of the Bali talks. They did not deliver the binding
commitments to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that are desperately
needed, and as a result millions may die who might have lived. But they
did show us something remarkable. They showed us the human race trying
to grow up and take responsibility for its common future. It doesn’t
feel like that, of course. It feels like 15,000 politicians, diplomats,
journalists and activists flew across continents in order to sit in Bali
for two weeks and achieve very little. Disappointment and even anger are
not out of order, for the commitment to early and deep emission cuts (25
to 40 percent by 2020) that most developed countries wanted to see in
the draft treaty had to be dropped in order to keep the United States
involved at all.
The Bush administration no longer denies that climate change is a
problem, but it is still determined to kill any international deal that
involves concrete and legally binding targets. The United States
produces about a quarter of the world’s emissions, so no deal that
excludes it would work. Moreover, the developing countries where
emissions are growing fastest, particularly China and India, will never
accepting obligations of their own while the United States accepts none.
So the American delegation had to be kept on board no matter how
obstructive it was. It was amazingly obstructive. There must be no
targets, there must be no timetables, there must be no numbers at all in
the “road map” that the conference was drawing up for the next two years
of negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto treaty, insisted chief US
negotiator Harlan Watson. Why not? Because “once numbers appear in the
text, it prejudges the outcome and will tend to drive the negotiations
in one direction.” Yes, and if everybody’s shared goal is cut emissions
and avoid catastrophic climate change, what’s wrong with that?
The United States was almost completely isolated at the Bali talks. Its
only two allies among the developed countries were Canada and Japan. It
was Al Gore who saved the day with a speech in which he urged the
conference to be patient. “My own country, the United States, is mainly
responsible for obstructing progress at Bali,” he admitted, but “over
the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not
now... One year and forty days from today there will be a new
(presidential) inauguration in the United States.” “If you decide to
continue the progress that has been made here on all the items other
than the targets and timetables for mandatory reductions, on the hope
and with the expectation that, before this process is concluded...you
will be able to fill in that blank (with the help of a different
position from the United States), then you can make great progress
here.” Bush will soon be gone. Even though time is short, you have to
wait him out.
The conference took Gore’s advice and removed the numbers from the text.
Even then, astonishingly, the US delegation declared that it could not
support the revised text — and a chorus of boos rang out in the crowded
conference hall. A delegate from Papua New Guinea stood up and told the
US delegation: “If you’re not willing to lead, please get out of the
way.” After a short huddle, the US delegation announced that it would
support the revised text after all. So don’t believe the cynics who say
that public opinion does not matter. A large majority of Americans are
far ahead of their government in their desire to see effective action on
climate change, and the Bush administration is fighting a delaying
action. With both world opinion and American public opinion solidly
against it, it suddenly became clear to the US delegation that this line
of trenches had to be abandoned fast.—Arab News
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