AIDS in China -- Voice of Protest is Heard, Authorities Reluctantly Face Spread of Disease

This week, the Chinese Ministry of Health is hosting the country's first national conference on HIV/AIDS, with open invitations to foreign media and appearances by top experts on the world AIDS scene. The keynote speaker is expected to be Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, a consortium of agencies fighting the global AIDS pandemic.

The conference comes three months after deputy health minister Yin Dakui stunned the Western press on Aug. 23 by holding a press conference to acknowledge that the nation is facing a potential AIDS epidemic. This acknowledgement follows years of denial about AIDS in China, where an official just two years ago denied that a single case of HIV existed in Henan, a province rife with HIV cases from blood transfusions.

UNAIDS puts the current figure of HIV incidence in China at more than 1 million infected and predicts 20 million cases by 2010. Last year, local officials and the state-run domestic press ignored both the contaminated blood supply in Henan and a rising alarm among health experts that HIV infection was growing.

Two years ago, a Chinese teenager acquired HIV from a blood transfusion. Rejection by medical personnel, neighbors and the local school prompted him to contact journalists from the United States and Australia to talk about HIV in China. Called "the Ryan White of China," Song Pengfei has given a face to AIDS in his nation, in spite of a regime insistent on dismissing the epidemic for years. "I didn't have a choice to speak or not to speak, because if I did not, I would be dead now," said Song, who once publicly dared Chinese health minister Zhand Wenkang to prove concern for people with AIDS by shaking his hand on live television. "I have heard that in the Health Ministry, they say about me, 'Song Pengfei is just an ant, and an ant cannot bite an elephant.' That is why they let me speak."

Song's efforts have made him not only the most famous HIV-positive person in China, but also probably one of the healthiest. In March 2000, Song began receiving combination therapy drugs for free through New York-based Aid for AIDS. Fewer than a dozen people in China take the therapies, because of their cost and availability.

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