(fwd from John Enyang) AIDS/China

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hidden from the world, a village dies of Aids while China refuses to
face a growing crisis

Jonathan Watts in Xiongqiao village, Henan province, the ground zero
of an epidemic threatening millions

Jonathan Watts Friday October 24 2003 The Guardian


Chang Sun's wife is HIV positive. So is his mother. So is his aunt. So
is his cousin and his cousin's wife. So is the woman next door and,
probably, so is her husband. In fact, it is quite possible that almost
every adult and many of the children in his small, remote village are
infected.

And then, there are those who lie in the flat, brown vegetable fields,
which are steadily filling with mossy green burial mounds.

Among them is Chang's father, who died of Aids last year, and his
three-year-old daughter, who succumbed the year before that. His first
wife is there too - she threw herself down the village well in 2000
after a doctor told her she was no longer worth treating because she had
the virus.

Another plot will soon be needed. As we walk furtively to Chang's home
under cover of darkness, the crackling of firewood in a neighbour's yard
reminds him that a traditional wake is being held for the latest son to
be lost to the disease, the 10th victim in the village this year.

"It is our custom for strong male adults to carry the coffin, but so
many people are sick or dead that there aren't enough of us left," says
the 35-year-old farmer. "So now it is the old people who are doing the
burying."

This is Xiongqiao village in Henan province, the ground zero of arguably
the world's worst HIV/Aids epidemic, with up to a million people
infected in this single province through a vast, largely unregulated
blood-selling operation.

The situation is already a catastrophe, but the risks are growing. The
medical treatment is inadequate and the authorities are trying to
cover up the truth with a lethal mix of censorship and police
intimidation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1070800,00.html



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