China confronts the face of AIDS

Some Chinese villagers have caught AIDS after selling their blood

By Jaime FlorCruz
CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief

BEIJING, China -- Wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap, Li Ziliang nervously stood on stage during the first AIDS benefit concert in Beijing -- the focus of unusual public attention.

Li, a farmer in his 30s, became the first Chinese AIDS patient who dared to face the media's camera.

"Starting from him," writes the Beijing Youth Daily, "the image of Chinese AIDS patient is no longer a shifty face or a murky mask."

Gingerly, the AIDS epidemic in China is coming out of the shadows, and the picture is grim. Since the first positive diagnosis was reported in 1985, the deadly disease has spread wide and fast.

By the end of September Minister of Health Zhang Wenkang said that over 28,000 people have tested HIV positive, of whom 1,208 were AIDS patients and 641 have died.

But some groups believe the actual number of infected could be closer to one million.

Not just sex workers

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The United Nations says China could have 10 million HIV carriers by 2010 unless the epidemic's spread is curbed.

Says UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot: "What we are seeing are pockets of rising and quite strong levels of infection originally among people who participated in sharing needles, drug use, and sex workers. But what we know from the experience all over the world is, it's spreading outside these groups."

Such dire prospects are prompting Chinese officials to come out of their state of denial.

China's cabinet has drafted a five-year action plan, and there is now more openness among them and in the media.

With the U.N.'s assistance, the Ministry of Health is holding China's first ever conference on AIDS, attended by 1,000 scholars, social workers and health workers and foreign experts.

Topping the agenda are issues of education, treatment and cooperation with non-governmental organizations.

'Journalists can save lives'

But Piot says China needs to do more, and urgently. He opines: "This should be a matter of national priority. The national government, the governors in every province, the mass organizations like the women's federation and youth league -- they all have to be on board. The media are not talking enough about AIDS. Journalists can save lives when it comes to AIDS as much as doctors can."

Tuesday's star-studded benefit concert, broadcast live on national television, may help.

The song-and-dance show featured film, TV and music celebrities, including Pu Cunxin, a movie superstar who was named China's AIDS Prevention spokesman last year. His image now appears on anti-AIDS posters, which features the ubiquitous Red Ribbon.

Piot enthuses: "That's a breakthrough and that's particularly important for young people because they look at them as role models and helps raise public awareness."

The celebrities' association with the campaign also helps diminish social stigma that stalks HIV carriers.

Piot, who recently met HIV carriers during a visit in Shanxi province, recalls tales of discrimination.

"They were rejected by society and could not say that they are infected for fear of being totally excluded," he says. "Even their children can't go to school because the father was infected."

Blood for money

HIV carriers like Zhang Long, 39, badly needs medical assistance and spiritual comfort.

A poor farmer from Henan province, Zhang had for eight years sold blood for money-and contracted HIV. His wife died last April of AIDS infection, and he thinks he will soon follow unless he gets immediate cure.

"I live one day at a time," he says glumly. "We can't get medical and financial assistance from our local governments."

He says at least 20 others in his village alone are infected. "In our village, people who don't know about AIDs laugh at us."

Wang Kun, another Henan farmer infected with HIV, complains that people run away from them for fear of getting infected.

"Nobody wants to buy our farm produce," he says. Zhang Long says the pang of loneliness is most painful.

"My wife and I were a happy couple," he recalls. "Then she suddenly died."

And then there is their child.