Public Health
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Chinese government signed an agreement on July 20 that will permit an ICRC regional delegation office to open in Beijing, according to the ICRC Web site and a Xinhua report. The Geneva-based ICRC provides medical aid and other supplies during emergencies, monitors and inspects prison conditions, and works with police, military forces, and others to promote humanitarian laws and policies. The Beijing office will cover China, Mongolia, and the Korean peninsula.
A January sweep of vagrants and mentally ill persons in Ganzhou city, Jianxi province, left five people missing and presumed dead, reports the China Youth Daily. According to the report, as part of an official effort to clean up the city, Ganzhou city civil affairs and public security officials rounded up seven vagrants and local mental patients, gave them some food, then drove them to a remote part of a neighboring county at night. The officials left the seven by the roadside in harsh winter weather. Two of the vagrants found their way back to Ganzhou, but five others in the group, including two mentally ill people who lived in the town, were still missing nearly six months later. After an exhaustive search, their families presume they are dead.
Chinese disabled persons and their supporters and advocates celebrated the 13th National Disability Assistance Day on May 15. This year's events highlighted problems the disabled have in getting and maintaining employment. Provincial and county officials across China held special events designed to help disabled citizens understand their rights and the special government programs that exist to assist them. According to the China Disabled Person's Federation (CDPF), over 83 percent of China's disabled citizens are now employed, owing principally to the efforts of officials staffing more than 3,000 special disability employment assistance centers. Since the creation of the CDPF in 1988, the employment rate for disabled rural citizens has increased from 50 percent to over 75 percent.
The Shanghai Municipal Public Health Bureau has issued two new measures dealing with HIV/AIDS. The first measure will help HIV/AIDS victims with the cost of the anti-retroviral drugs needed to fight the disease and the cost of other treatments for the bacterial, viral, parasitic, and fungal opportunistic infections that affect HIV victims. These free or reduced cost treatments will be provided to people with Shanghai hukou, or household registrations. This measure also provides treatment for pregnant women with HIV/AIDS to prevent transmission to the unborn child; this category of treatment does not appear to be limited to women with a Shanghai hukou. The second measure establishes a free system of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) for anyone who wants to participate, and provides for training the VCT staff and patient confidentiality.
On April 10, thousands of villagers in Huashui town, Zhejiang province, began rioting after government authorities sent police in to disperse a group that was peacefully protesting the operation of chemical plants that have polluted the area for the past three years, according to news reports (South China Morning Post (subscription only), Reuters, Times Online, AFP, Duowei News Agency, Singapore Straits Times). The incidence of birth defects, illness, and poor crop yields has increased significantly since the plants were built, according to the reports.
Chinese authorities have ordered the Beijing AIDS Institute of Health Education, a respected Chinese non-governmental organization active in the fight against AIDS, to change its name or face closure, according to a South China Morning Post report. The move comes after the Beijing AIDS Institute issued a report alleging that official Chinese plans regarding the use of international AIDS funding lacked adequate public participation and representative patient sampling.
Chinese authorities have released retired PLA general and physician Dr. Jiang Yanyong from house arrest, according to Western news media and NGOs, including Reuters and the China Information Center.
Some 30 lawyers, HIV workers, reporters, and plaintiffs in current lawsuits gathered in Beijing February 24 to discuss issues arising in compensation suits in which HIV/AIDS has been transmitted through transfusions or contaminated blood products. The group examined the hardships that victims have in asserting such claims, particularly in collecting evidence. It also noted that judges delay rulings in these compensation cases without a legal rationale, have difficulties in fixing damages, and frequently find that administrative authorities interfere in the judicial process. Yet the government has the duty to stand behind judicial awards in these cases, it said.
Jonathan Watts reports from Beijing that the HIV crisis in China may force the government to be more responsive to citizens' demands and needs. Watts quotes HIV/AIDS activist Wan Yanhai as predicting that "By 2020, Aids will have transformed society.... People have to ask questions ..., they have to get involved in social politics and get organized. From my personal experience I'm absolutely certain that this kind of activity will lead China toward democracy."
Reporter Philip Pan writes that activists organizing assistance for HIV victims in Henan Province face many obstacles. Li Dan gave up a career in astronomy to try to help the victims of HIV/AIDS in Henan. He decided to focus on children whose parents had died of the disease, and set up an orphanage and school in Shangqiu, finding volunteers to staff it, and raising funds from donors in Shanghai and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, he was not able to get his school approved by the local bureau of civil affairs unless he turned the money over to them and had the city run the school. Li's decision to go ahead with the school without approval led to determined efforts by local leaders to close it down, in part because they felt that such a school harmed the city's reputation.