As a non-profit social organization, the China Youth
Development Foundation has devoted itself to preventing young
migrant workers from being infected by HIV/AIDS.
"Young farmer-turned workers are among the group that is most
vulnerable to AIDS," said Wu Xiuhe, vice-director of the
organization's Health Foundation Office.
In Xiaxian County of north China's Shanxi
Province, three classrooms were set up by Wu's office to teach
young workers-to-be HIV/AIDS prevention. "The work started in March
as an experimental project and will expand to other regions if
successful," Wu said.
He emphasized that it is very important to educate young migrant
workers on the issue.
"Far away from their hometown, some of them may sell blood to
illegal blood banks for money. Some may have sexual relations with
prostitutes. And these are both very possible ways to contract
HIV/AIDS," he said.
"Even worse, most of those migrant workers don't know how to
avoid the fatal disease. They will even hardly realize it when they
are infected as most of them do not have regular physical
examinations," Wu said.
A survey conducted by the China Youth Development Foundation in
south China's Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region supported Wu's views. Among the 100
people surveyed at Guangxi's capital city Nanning, only 19 percent
knew the three transmission ways of HIV.
The people surveyed covered various fields including security
personnel, sales people, dust men and drivers.
Besides educating migrant workers at their home towns, Wu's
office also recruited more than 200 volunteers to hand out
materials on AIDS prevention in Beijing, one of the cities that has
a large number of migrant workers. "The books, written by us, have
simple characters and pictures to make them easy to understand," he
said.
(China Daily July 3, 2004)