China Says to Punish Any AIDS Coverup

China warned against any new AIDS cover up Wednesday, a day after telling health workers they will be punished if they fail to report new SARS cases.

China warned against any new AIDS cover up Wednesday, a day after telling health workers they will be punished if they fail to report new SARS cases. The official China Daily highlighted a meeting between Vice-Premier Wu Yi with HIV/AIDS patients in Henan province, where blood-selling schemes led to mass infections in some villages, in which she vowed to punish anyone trying to conceal the disease. Wu’s three-day trip to the populous central province underscored a new-found commitment to tackle the disease, highlighted at the beginning of the month when Premier Wen Jiabao shook hands with AIDS patients in Beijing. China warned health workers Tuesday they would be punished if they failed to report new SARS cases, seeking to head off a repeat of a coverup early this year that led to widespread international criticism. Wu said China’s AIDS prevention and control situation was “grim” and vowed to punish those found responsible for covering up AIDS cases. The government says there are 840,000 people with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, in the world’s most populous country, and about 80,000 full-blown cases. The United Nations has warned that the figure for infections could reach 10 million by 2010 if China fails to take the disease seriously. World leaders have criticized China’s leadership as slow to tackle the epidemic. In the mid-1990s, HIV infections in some Henan villages soared after peasants sold plasma to blood banks and had the remaining blood — which had been pooled with that of others — injected back into their veins. Activists and experts continue to point out local coverups and newspaper stories that play down victims’ suffering. Wu said the government at all levels should crack down hard on illegal blood selling and regulate the blood donation system.(Source: Reuters Health News: 23rd December 2003)