This year's Edwin B. Lee Lecture was presented by two prominent speakers, Wan Yanhai, AIDS activist and founder of Aizi Action Project in China; and Bates Gill, an expert on US-China relations and chair in China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The speakers addressed "China's Looming AIDS Crisis."
Although only a recent problem in China, AIDS is rapidly growing among the population. Currently no one knows the exactly number of people who have HIV in China, though estimation varies from 1,000,000 by Chinese officials to other international non-governmental organization's estimate of two million. Nevertheless, the U.N. surmises that if the Chinese government does not start to control the problem now, the number infected with AIDS in China could well exceed 10 million by the end of this decade. This would be double the number of AIDs patients in South Africa, a country that currently has the highest AIDS population in the world.
Gill pointed out that the AIDS crisis in China is driven by three major factors: lack of awareness of the seriousness of the issue, changing economic conditions and the huge transient population. Open discussion of AIDS still remains taboo in China, and most schools lack of sex education. More than 17 percent of Chinese have never heard of HIV. They also believe "it can't happen to me," since only the "bad" people will get infected. According to Gill, there are currently more than 100 million people "flowing" around China, 81 percent of them between 15-45 years old. He said that "most of these young people are sexually active but they do not know how to use protection to perform safe sex."
Finally, Gill said that Chinese government is moving in the right direction. The government created a formal action plan in 2001, established China's Center for Disease Control, and increased anti-HIV funding. However, China is still poorly prepared to prevent a future AIDS crisis, and currently there are only 50 doctors in the whole country who can prescribe HIV drug. He said it is time to switch our focus on China's external issues, such Taiwan, nuclear nonproliferation, to internal issues, such as AIDS.
Wan began his speech describing his early experiences as a gay rights advocate, but devoted most of his time to the AIDS epidemic in Henan, China. Shortage of blood is major problem for most hospitals in China, and in Henan Province the government helped the hospitals buy blood from the poor farmers. Since the blood drive was not regulated by the central government the doctors used same needles for all blood sellers. Most of the blood sellers were infected by HIV through the needles. The average percent of HIV patients in those villages is about 30-50, but in one village 80 percent of the people tested HIV-positive. Many died because they were unable to afford the drugs, and the government refused any supports.
The local government tried to cover up the AIDS epidemic in the province since they were directly involved with the blood drive. When Wan found out about the epidemic he uncovered it and was detained for awhile. He believes that it is the government's duty to provide free drugs to the patient under Chinese Constitutional Law and he has fought hard to get the central government's attention on the issue as well as free drugs for those infected. Wan's efforts slowly began to pay off. He said recently the government has been slowly showing the AIDS issue to the public. After he was released from detention, the government granted his application to establish the Aizhi Xing Institution.
