AIDS Ahead of Economics

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan made his long tour to China not for the sake of getting a doctor mantle or talks about the HIV danger. Judging from the laconic account of Annan’s talks with Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Tang Jiaxuan, the talks were mostly focused on the UN Security Council problems in connection with the US-led anti-Iraq aggression. However, AIDS is a pressing problem for China. This is confirmed by the fact that the lecture on the AIDS problem delivered by Kofi Annan at one of a Chinese university was immediately supported by the Chinese media. At that, the media confirmed Annan’s forecast, saying that number of HIV-infected will reach 10 million people by 2010 in China. As of now, the number makes up about one million.

Sixty-eight percent of HIV-infected people are drug-addicts who used infected syringes; 9.7% became infected when they donated blood (this usually happens when the procedure is organized by individual persons under poor conditions), and 1.5% fell victims to this careless blood transfusion. In other words, 4/5 of HIV-infected people fell victims because of anti-social accidents caused by the evil influence of the West, dissolution of morals, and implementation of market values.

What is the most distressing is that the rate of HIV expansion is incredible: the number of HIV-infected in China increased by 16.7% within the first six months in 2002 as compared with the first six months of last year. This increase is more than twice as large as the economic growth.

Andrey Krushinsky PRAVDA.Ru Beijing China

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: https://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/10/16/48456.html

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