This week, public health agencies for the first
time published research into gay men's sexual health.
Chinese society is slowly becoming more aware of
its gay population, partly due to greater visibility and partly in
realization that a more pragmatic approach to sex and sexuality is
needed to deal with threats to sexual health.
Zhang Baichuan, an expert on gay issues based in
Qingdao, a coastal city in Shandong
Province, estimates that around 2 to 4 percent of the adult
male population in China is gay -- that's between 5
million and 12.5 million.
Of course, the visible number is much lower: a
survey conducted from April to August in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang
Province, suggested that gay men attending bars, parks and
baths accounted for 0.9 percent of men aged 15 to 55.
Wu Yuhua, from the province's Disease Control
Center, ran the research to investigate incidence of HIV amongst
local gay men. "Many are not open in public at all, so we could
only estimate a percentage of the population," he told China
Daily Wednesday.
The survey at two public baths in Harbin showed
that, of 148 gay men, two were confirmed as being HIV positive.
That is a prevalence of 1.35 percent, but whether the sample can be
seen as at all representative of the wider gay population is
unknown.
An assessment published jointly on Tuesday by the
Ministry of Health and the UN Theme Group on HIV/AIDS said that
over 1 percent of gay men in Beijing, Harbin, Guangzhou, Shenyang
and other cities may be HIV positive.
It also said that condom use amongst gay men is
low, a major concern since it is thought that 11.1 percent of all
people with HIV are gay men.
Hundreds of gay men have already become volunteers
to further rights to better services. Zhang said that a lot of work
has been done in recent years with the support of local medical
organizations.
Clearly there is still room for much more work to
involve gay men and improve awareness of sexual health issues.
Wu said that public health workers should provide
better services and comprehensive support for gay men to prevent
wider spread of the virus.
(China Daily December 2, 2004)