Interesting insights on AIDS in China
I was sent this very interesting article about AIDS in China today….
Letter from China: Where heroin flows, an AIDS explosion
By Jehangir S. Pocha
The Boston Globe
International Herald Tribune
June 8, 2006
KUNMING, China This scenic capital of China's southern Yunnan
Province has earned itself a more unsavory sobriquet - China's AIDS
capital.
Historically, this multi-ethnic region of stunning valleys and
gorges, including a site locals say is the fabled region of Shangri- La, stood out in mostly Han China for its uniquely diverse culture
and beauty.
Now the province, where China's first HIV cases were discovered in
the early 1990s, is home to about 30,000 of the 140,000 Chinese who
are HIV- positive, according to official reports. And that is almost
certainly an underestimate, said Yang Maobin, director of Daytop, an
HIV/AIDS care center in Kunming.
Experts say that in reality there could be as many as 200,000 HIV
cases in Yunnan and 300,000 more in the neighboring autonomous
regions of Guangxi and western Xinjiang. Part of the reason almost
half of China's HIV cases are concentrated in these areas is their
proximity to the world's largest heroin-producing areas -
Afghanistan in the case of Xinjiang and the "Golden Triangle"
countries of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos in the case of Yunnan and
Guangxi.