China Bans Blood Trade to Stop AIDS

China’s parliament passed a law Saturday banning the buying or selling of blood to prevent the spread of AIDS and outlawing discrimination against victims of infectious diseases, state media said.

China’s parliament passed a law Saturday banning the buying or selling of blood to prevent the spread of AIDS and outlawing discrimination against victims of infectious diseases, state media said.China says it has 840,000 HIV/AIDS cases, but experts say at least one million poor farmers were infected in the central province of Henan alone as a result of botched blood-selling schemes in the 1990s.President Hu Jintao signed 12 decrees enacting two revised laws and 10 amendments to laws which were passed at the 11th session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which ended Saturday.Most significant was the revised Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases, which requires the government to guarantee funds for infectious disease prevention.”The law stipulates that governments of various levels should strengthen prevention and control of AIDS and take measures to prevent the spread of the disease,” Xinhua news agency said. “This is the first time that AIDS (has been) specifically targeted in the law.”State television said the law banned the buying and selling of blood and ruled out discrimination against people infected with, or suspected of having, contagious diseases.The country has also had to battle recent outbreaks of SARS, a disease it was slow to acknowledge, and bird flu.SARS emerged in southern China in late 2002 to spread round the world to infect 8,000 people in nearly 30 countries, devastating airline and tourism industries. Nearly 800 people died.”In general, the law underscores prevention and early warning of contagious diseases and isolation of patients of contagious disease,” Xinhua said.”It puts greater responsibility on medical institutions to monitor the spread of contagious diseases and prevent infection inside hospitals.”The second revised law deals with electronic signatures on business contracts. The amendments concern nine laws and one regulation on highways, corporations, securities, negotiable instruments, auctions, wildlife protection, fishing, agriculture, degree and land administration. (Source: Reuters, August 2004)