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Media Report 81
Source: | Author:hkb980dd | Published time: 2013-07-08 | 370 Views | Share:
 
Source: China Daily
 
Plans for an AIDS walk, to raise funds to tackle the disease, were announced in Sanlitun, Beijing on Thursday.
 
Representatives from the China Population Welfare Foundation, UNAIDS China Office as well as civil organizations attended the ceremony.
 
The walk will take place on the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall in Hebei province on Oct 13.
 
Guy Taylor, from UNAIDS China Office, said the event will help raise public awareness about HIV/AIDS and combat discrimination against patients.
 
Zhao Zheng, who works for an NGO that fights against discrimination, shared his experience as a HIV carrier after he was diagnosed last year.
 
Applications for the event and information are available online.
 
Film star Xu Qing also attended the ceremony as ambassador for the event that attracted 120 hikers last year. More…
 
 
05/07/2013
 
Source: China Daily Africa
 
Lower Under-5 mortality rate shows country's great strides, expert says
 
China has an impressive record in delivering public health services and could play an important role in helping prevent disease in Africa, a health expert says.
 
Ray Yip, director of the China Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, says China's approach would help African countries strengthen their ability to prevent disease through better services and better delivery.
 
"We've seen tremendous progress in reducing under-5 mortality in China mostly due to effective preventive services such as childhood immunization," Yip says. "But the challenge in Africa is that even if we have the vaccines, we cannot deliver them to the people who need them most. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China ensures that diseases are monitored and necessary services are delivered."
 
The under-5 mortality rate is one of the most important indicators of progress in health services, he says, and in China the rate fell from 48 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1993 to 9 per 1,000 live births last year.
 
"But the number of children dying before the age of five is still high, so we need to sustain this important progress. We can do so by looking at some of the highest causes of under-5 deaths, such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria, which are now completely preventable through vaccines."
 
But in some of the more remote areas of China the under-5 mortality figure can be three to four times that of coastal areas, something that China needs to tackle, Yip says.
 
But generally China's experience in reducing epidemic diseases and improving public health provides invaluable lessons for Africa, one of these being about accessible health products, Yip says. More…
 
03/07/2013
 
Source: China.org.cn
 
According to provincial health experts, the frequency of elderly people older than the age of 60 contracting syphilis is going up, mostly because of risky sexual activities.
 
Zhang Xibao, director of the Guangzhou Institute of Dermatology, said the rate has been increasing by more than 10 percent annually since 2011.
 
"For people older than 70, the incidence is more than 50 for every 100,000 people. This is very high," he said. "These people are usually retired and lonely and it's not difficult to find cheap, but risky prostitution in the neighborhood."
 
The number of newly discovered HIV/AIDS cases among this small group of people is also increasing in the provincial capital of Guangzhou. Zhang said there is a possible link between the rise in syphilis cases and HIV/AIDS infections, Zhang said.
 
"Syphilis infection can break the mucous membrane of reproductive organs, which acts like a barrier to keep away sexually transmitted diseases, making it easier for people to get other STDs, including HIV/AIDS," he said. "Given that currently HIV/AIDS is mainly transmitted through sex, controlling other STDs means controlling HIV/AIDS."
 
He said the primary demographic of syphilis sufferers, however, is still people between the ages of 20 and 45. This group accounted for more than 50 percent of new syphilis cases in the province last year, mostly because they are more sexually active, he said.
 
Wang Xiaochun, director of hepatitis C and STD prevention for the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, also stressed the importance of preventing and treating STDs in order to control the spread of HIV/AIDS. More…
 
03/07/2013
 
Source: China Digital Times
 
After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a federal ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, members of the LGBT community gathered around the world for Pride parades last weekend in remembrance of the 1969 Stonewall riots. Amid these signs of a long-overdue shift in the global acceptance of LGBT culture, ChinaFile asks two China-watchers how accepting gay culture would change the country:
 
[Steven Jiang]: [...]It would restore China to its full glory of the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), when an emperor famously cut off his sleeve rather than disturbing his sleeping male lover, turning the phrase “passion of the cut sleeve” to a poetic term to describe homosexuality.
 
Facetious answer aside, many experts have pointed out that historically China has been a relatively accepting place for homosexuality due to the lack of religious condemnation. Some of the nation’s best-known literary classics contain detailed references to gay culture.
 
[...]Public intolerance of homosexuality seems to be a more recent phenomenon, especially after the post-1949 Communist government denounced it as a feudal and bourgeois decadence. Adopting a puritanical moral code, the authorities have in the past listed homosexuality as a mental disorder and prosecuted gay people under the crime of hooliganism. Now no longer a crime or disease, homosexuality has nonetheless remained a sensitive topic in the eye of the government. State broadcaster CCTV, for instance, censored remarks by Ang Lee and Sean Pennduring their Oscar acceptance speeches for two gay-themed movies. Police sometimes shut down gay venues and events with little advance warnings.[...] [Source] More…
 
03/07/2013
 
Source: China Daily
 
The central government may expand free treatment for HIV/AIDS patients in response to international calls for earlier and appropriate treatment, according to a senior official.
 
Wu Zunyou, director of the National Center for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Control and Prevention, was speaking on Tuesday after the World Health Organisation issued new HIV/AIDS treatment guidelines highlighting earlier antiretroviral therapy, or ART.
 
It urged countries to initiate treatment among patients with a CD4 cell count - an indicator of the seriousness of an HIV-related illness -of below 500 cells per cubic millimeter. A patient at this stage usually still has a strong immune system.
 
The previous recommendation, issued in 2010, was to start treatment at 350 CD4 cells/mm3 or below.
 
"The top health authority is looking at offering earlier treatment to the infected, which would help people with HIV live longer, healthier lives and reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to others," Wu said.
 
He said an assessment study is underway to evaluate the initiative, but did not give a timetable.
 
Currently, infected pregnant women and couples, where one side tests positive for HIV, receive free medication regardless of their CD4 count. Wu said the project will help the government decide whether to initiate earlier treatment nationwide.
 
"We have to make sure of both the benefits and potential defects of the initiative before we carry it out in full on the mainland," he added. More…
 
30/06/2013
 
Source: South China Morning Post
 
Activist Ye Haiyan has been called everything from a hooligan and troublemaker to a prostitute, feminist, sex workers' rights activist and a pro-democracy crusader.
 
To Professor Ai Xiaoming, a Guangzhou-based scholar and documentary maker, Ye is "a rare and courageous woman who fights the dirty battle for sex workers' rights in China". But some conservatives have described her as a crazy liar who leads a raunchy lifestyle and colludes with hostile foreign powers to create trouble.
 
She was released from 13 days of detention on June 12 after she scared off three trespassers to her home, soon after she returned from protesting in Wanning, Hainan, outside a school and a government school where a school principal and a government clerk were accused of raping six girls, aged 11 to 14.
 
On the day of her release, Ye's 13-year-old daughter lay quietly in bed beside her controversial mother, who was busy being interviewed by journalists.
 
"I'm just happy to have my mum back," she said. "I only began searching my mum's name online a few days ago. I don't really know what she is doing but I think she is helping women and girls who got raped by a principal.
 
"She's like [the character] V, who can move people and liberate a nation," her daughter, a fan of the movie V for Vendetta, said.
 
"I think she's liberating [women] and sex workers."
 
However, she's also afraid of the constant harassment they have faced. "Our lives have been derailed," she said.
 
Ye and her daughter are looking for a new place to live away from Guangxi after just two years in Bobai county. More…
 
30/06/2013
 
Source: South China Morning Post
 
Nearly 10 million more people infected with the AIDS virus now meet medical standards for receiving HIV drugs, according to revised UN guidelines released on Sunday, which experts say could avert 6.5 million deaths or new infections by 2025.
 
But achieving this goal will be a challenge, as it will add some US$2 billion a year to the bill to fight the 32-year AIDS epidemic, they acknowledged.
 
“Treating people with HIV earlier ... can both keep them healthy and lowers the amount of virus in the blood, which reduces the risk of passing it to someone else,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in new recommendations for combatting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
 
Around 34 million people worldwide were living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2011, nearly 70 per cent of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to WHO statistics.
 
The UN agency’s previous treatment guidelines, set down in 2010, called for drug initiation when the tally of CD4 cells – the key immune cells targeted by HIV – reached 350 cells or less per microlitre of blood.
 
Under this benchmark, 16.7 million people in low and middle-income countries were medically eligible last year to receive the drug “cocktail”, which rolls back infection although it does not cure it.
 
Despite years of fund-raising and efforts to build medical infrastructure in poor countries, only 9.7 million of the 16.7 million currently get the treatment.
 
That means treatment should start at a much earlier stage of infection. More…
 
27/06/2013
 
Source: South China Morning Post
 
Massage parlour “happy endings” are considered a form of prostitution and are therefore illegal, Beijing police confirmed on Thursday. This is in response to earlier reports in the southern province of Guangdong which suggested it could be in a legal grey area.
 
Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily on Wednesday reported that a Foshan court had overturned a decision to charge an owner of a massage parlour and three associates with organised prostitution. They had allegedly allowed employees to offer clients manual stimulation and “other erotic massages”.
 
After further investigation, the defendants were acquitted due to “unclear facts and improper applications of the law”. The court said manual stimulation was not, by criminal law, considered a form of prostitution.
 
But Beijing police hit back on Thursday citing its own laws stipulated by the Ministry of Public Security, which specified that providing or receiving of sexual activity for hire, including oral sex, masturbation or sodomy, would be considered prostitution and thus, illegal.
 
“Prostitution entails both persons involved to have reached a subjective agreement on a price or exchange before the transaction. If both parties acknowledge it is sex for hire; it is considered solicited prostitution,” the Beijing-based Jinghua Times reported, quoting a police statement.
 
Those caught soliciting prostitution could face between 10 to 15 days in prison and a fine of 5,000 yuan (HK$6,300). Repeated offenders would be fined the same amount but may be sentenced to re-education through labour, the police said.
 
Manual stimulation by hand is often offered as an extra service at many massage and “beauty” parlours across the country and is an issue of contention. More…
 
27/06/2013
 
Source: China Daily
 
A woman with HIV cares for 23 children born with the virus and - despite stigma - shares her hopes for the children on TV, without concealing her face, as most Chinese patients do. Zhang Yue and Sun Ruisheng report in Linfen, Shanxi province.
 
Stigma drives many Chinese with HIV to demand their faces are pixilated when they're on TV. Liu Liping, instead, wears makeup to look her best.
 
The presenter of the popular talent program Chinese Dream Show Zhou Libo asked Liu why she didn't hide her face when she appeared on the program on May 25.
 
"I don't need to hide from anyone," the 40-year-old says.
 
"I'm a patient - not a sinner."
 
Liu works as a caretaker at the Red Ribbon School in Shanxi province's Linfen. The school used to be a contagion area for HIV/AIDS patients of the Third Hospital of Linfen. The wards were renovated into a school for children with HIV/AIDS in 2005. There are currently 23 students.
 
Liu was infected with HIV in the summer of 1996 when she underwent an operation for an extra-uterine pregnancy and had an acute massive bleeding.
 
"It was a clinic in my rural hometown, which didn't have a blood bank," Liu recalls.
 
"Local people would sell their blood to the hospital when it was needed." More…
 
19/06/2013
 
Source: China Daily USA
 
BEIJING - A total of 17,315 people died of infectious diseases on the Chinese mainland throughout 2012, with AIDS killing the most, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a Wednesday statement.
 
A total of 6.95 million infectious disease cases were reported on the Chinese mainland in 2012, the statement said.
 
Among the cases, 3.21 million cases were categorized as Class A or Class B infectious diseases. These cases resulted in 16,721 deaths.
 
Among the Class A and B infectious diseases, AIDS, tuberculosis, rabies, hepatitis and hemorrhagic fever were the most deadly diseases, contributing to over 98 percent of deaths within the category. Hepatitis, tuberculosis, syphilis, dysentery and gonorrhea were the most prevalent within the category.
 
Class C infectious diseases claimed 594 lives in 2012, with foot-and-mouth disease reported as the most prevalent and deadly class C infectious disease, according to the statement.