Public Health

Citing government pressure, prominent Chinese AIDS activist Hu Jia resigned from Loving Source, an AIDS organization he helped found in 2003 to assist the orphans of AIDS victims, according to a February 7 Reuters report. Hu said, "I left to avoid trouble for Loving Source."

The Gulou District People's Court in Fuzhou city, Fujian province, sentenced Li Changqing, a deputy director at the Fuzhou Daily, to three years imprisonment for "reporting for the U.S.-based Chinese-language news portal Boxun that an outbreak of [dengue fever] had infected more than 100 people in Fujian in 2004," according to a January 25 Reuters report citing Li's lawyer, Mo Shaoping. Public security officials previously placed Li under residential surveillance on January 20, 2005, and formally arrested him on February 3, 2005, for "inciting subversion of state power," a crime under Article 105 of the Criminal Law.

The State Council Working Committee on AIDS Prevention and Treatment reported that the number of confirmed HIV/AIDS carriers in China has risen to more than 130,000, according to the transcript of a November 29 teleconference posted on the National Population and Family Planning Commission Web site. That number accounts for only about 16 percent of the total estimated HIV/AIDS cases in the country, according to comments made by Vice Premier Wu Yi during the teleconference.

The State Council issued the Emergency Response Regulations for Major Epidemics of Animal Diseases on November 16, in an attempt to ensure accurate reporting of avian flu outbreaks in poultry. Under the new regulation, provincial governments must report "major" animal epidemics to the State Council within four hours of discovering them, and county and city governments must report cases to provincial authorities within two hours. Officials found negligent in reporting outbreaks now face removal from office, and potential prosecution.

Li Yizhong, Minister of the General Administration of Work Safety (GAWS), commented that the Chinese government should implement stricter safety standards for coal mines and a regularized process of mine inspections, according to a November 15 Legal Daily report. Li led an inspection tour of coal mines in Hunan province, one of nine province-wide inspections of unsafe mines that the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, a unit of GAWS, conducted in November.