The Chinese Government will take a more positive attitude and
more aggressive actions to support the anti-HIV activities of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), said Chen Xiaohong, vice
minister of the Ministry of Health.
In an interview with China Daily, Chen said "the
Chinese Government has fully realized the active and important role
of NGOs in HIV/AIDS prevention and control in the past years."
He vowed that in the future, the Chinese Government will
strengthen its efforts to guide NGOs and establish better working
and collaborative mechanisms, encouraging them to contribute more
to the country's HIV/AIDS control and prevention, which now is
mainly done by governments at different levels.
The central government has worked hard to contain the spread of
the virus and treat HIV/AIDS sufferers over the past 10 years. In
2003, it started to provide free antiviral drugs to all
poverty-stricken patients, free education for children of
AIDS-affected families and free HIV testing for all residents.
Additionally, the government and centres for disease control and
prevention (CDC) at different levels have sponsored a number of
intervention works, such as public education, voluntary HIV testing
and condom distribution in entertainment places, to ensure the
virus does not spread from so-called high-risk groups, including
drug users and prostitutes, to the general public.
However, in the war against AIDS, governments are not able to do
everything. Vice Premier Wu Yi said recently that all aspects of
society, including various domestic and overseas communities, NGOs,
enterprises, and volunteers, must be welcomed to join the
effort.
Commercial sex and drug trading are illegal in China. Thus, it
is quite difficult for officials and CDC experts to communicate
with people who constitute a large part of the high-risk
groups.
For homosexual persons, who are comparatively isolated from the
outside world, the difficulty is even bigger.
But NGOs can do the work much more easily.
"We have the same feeling with them, and what we do could be
accepted by them easily," said Meng Lin, a gay man with HIV.
Meng is the head of "ARK of Love," a Beijing-based informational
support network for people suffering from HIV/AIDS.
"In fact, strictly speaking, our organization cannot be called a
real NGO because we have not registered at any relative
authoritative department according to China's laws and regulations.
We can only be called a grass-roots organization," Meng said.
However, currently the Chinese Government takes a very tolerant
and generous attitude towards grass-roots organizations established
by HIV-positive volunteers, he said, so his organization had been
able to do a lot of work in the past year to protect the rights of
HIV/AIDS sufferers.
In some parts of China, such as Shenyang, the capital city of
Northeast China's Liaoning Province, Meng's organization has
established several groups of HIV/AIDS volunteers to negotiate with
or push local governments to improve the living status of people
who are HIV positive.
He said there are dozens of grass-roots organizations like "ARK
of Love" in China now.
Meanwhile, nearly 50 national NGOs, such as the All-China
Women's Federation and China Family Planning Association, are
taking an active part in the country's war against the deadly
virus.
The regulation on HIV/AIDS control and prevention issued by the
State Council early this year has also made it clear that the State
supports NGOs and individuals, encouraging them to intervene among
high-risk groups and provide care and relief for AIDS patients and
their relatives.
NGOs and HIV/AIDS volunteers can set up a "bridge" between the
patients and society. They can give more care and understanding to
sufferers who need more than medical treatment, said Xu Lianzhi, a
doctor of HIV/AIDS treatment from You'an Hospital of Beijing.
Since 2002, the central government has allocated at least 20
million yuan (US$2.5 million) to fuel 231 projects or programmes
carried out by NGOs and various communities in 150 counties of 30
provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.
At the same time, the Chinese Government also used money
committed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria to support NGOs' activities.
Since 2004, a total of 72 NGOs had received 3.75 million yuan
(US$450,000) from the Fund's third-round finance injection for uses
such as public education among migrant populations, young persons
and prostitutes.
The Fund's fifth-round injection, which was kicked off in July,
is projected to give US$29 million to China for tackling the
disease over the coming five years. Of this, 43 percent will be
used to support NGOs' activities, officials said.
Governments and NGOs should make joint efforts in HIV/AIDS
control just like the two wings of a bird, said Zhang Weiqing,
director of the National Population and Family Planning
Commission.
In many aspects, he added, NGOs can even do better than the
government.
According to official statistics released by the United Nations
and the Ministry of Health, 650,000 Chinese now suffer from
HIV/AIDS. Nearly half of all the HIV-positive people reported in
2005 were infected through unsafe sexual contact.
(China Daily October 4, 2006)