With Ignorance as the Fuel, AIDS Speeds Across China

AIDS in China is spreading at a breakneck pace -- reported cases are up 67 percent this year over last -- in large part because its citizens are so poorly informed about the disease. Even those at very high risk of getting AIDS often do not know how to protect themselves; many have never even heard of HIV. In the largest national survey to date, conducted a year ago by China's State Family Planning Commission, 20 percent of Chinese in 12 counties representing a cross-section of the country had never heard of the disease. Only 50 percent knew that it could be transmitted by sex. Forty percent of the country's residents said they did not know how AIDS could be prevented, suggesting that they could be unknowingly passing it to others.

Dr. Zhao Baige of the Family Planning Commission, who has pressed for more aggressive education, said: "In our studies, less than 50 percent of people knew that condoms could prevent the transmission of HIV. That shows we have a serious prevention problem." The most profound ignorance was found in Shanghai County in Henan Province, where some villages have adult HIV infection rates approaching 50 percent -- the result of selling blood to collectors who used unsanitary practices.

Consequently, a disease that was for many years confined to certain groups, particularly drug users, has started to move quickly into the general population, generally through sex. As the government has worked hard to rein in unhygienic practices in the blood industry, the sex industry has become for many experts an even more worrisome conduit. Chinese doctors tend to view sex workers as the "bridge" that allows AIDS to spread, and an increasing number of programs seek to educate this population. Although the Chinese government has admitted this year to having a serious AIDS problem and recently initiated a series of educational programs, many of these are still in the planning stage and others are small local programs financed by foreign organizations.

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