China still is treating AIDS cases poorly

MIANCHI, China - Twice a week, just after school lets out in this small county in Henan province, a 13-year-old girl with a short bob and wide smile holds her parents' hands and walks two blocks down the street into the harsh fluorescent light of an emergency medical station.

There, she pulls back the waistband of her pants while a nurse dabs disinfectant, prepares a syringe and gives the girl's right buttock a quick jab.

"It doesn't hurt," the girl said after a recent visit. "I'm used to it."

The girl, whose parents asked that her name not be used, has HIV, which they say she contracted through an unnecessary blood transfusion in 1995. Despite early symptoms suggesting she had the virus, doctors at the hospital that treated her said her problems were minor and unrelated to the transfusion. They gave her anti-inflammatory drugs and blister cream.

Not until March, when the family turned to another hospital in neighboring Shaanxi province, did doctors test the girl and determine she had HIV.

"At the time, I almost collapsed. I just didn't want to live," said the girl's mother, who asked to be identified only by her surname, Li.

The girl's case is hardly unique in China, where despite official pledges at the national level to care for people with the virus that causes AIDS, local hospital and government officials frequently express reluctance to do so.

Some fear having to compensate people who contracted the virus through blood transfusions, a common method of HIV transmission in China. Others fear that the publicity of AIDS cases will hamper local investment.

Communist Party leaders long treated AIDS as taboo. In recent years, however, China has won praise from the West for campaigns to raise awareness. In 2003, the government promised free HIV testing and counseling for all who wanted it, and free antiretroviral treatment for the poor. That year, Premier Wen Jiabao made headlines after being shown on state TV shaking hands with AIDS patients.

And yet hospitals like the one here in Mianchi County not only fail to offer to test for HIV, they deliberately misdiagnose and cover up the problem, according to experts.

There were 18,543 new cases of HIV reported in the first six months of this year, nearly as many as for all of last year, according to the official Xinhua news agency. China's estimate of 650,000 AIDS cases, among a population of 1.3 billion people, is extremely low, domestic and international AIDS groups say.