Cutting AIDS Funding to China a Big Mistake: UNAIDS

The executive director of UNAIDS warned Monday that critics who say China is too wealthy to be receiving donations for fighting HIV are off the mark.

"I think it'll be a big mistake for a donor and particularly, for anyone who's invested in China today, to withdraw, for the simple reason that this funding is a catalytic fund," Michel Sidibe said in Beijing at a meeting of health ministers from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

By creating linkages among government, civil society, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria is making progress in China, Sidibe said. The fund has approved $947 million to China, of which $369 million goes toward HIV/AIDS.

China has cracked down on AIDS activists and NGOs working there, yet it also has launched programs to provide universal access to antiretroviral treatment and introduced policies to curb disease-related discrimination. In June, officials released Hu Jia, a longtime advocate for rural HIV/AIDS patients, after he served three-and-a-half years in jail on subversion charges. Sidibe said Vice Premier Li Keqiang told him Monday that involving community-based organizations in the fight against AIDS "was an important transformation that China wants to see."

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