China’s Christians roll up their sleeves
to help sufferers

CHINA — When the extent of the AIDS problem in the West began to become clear in the early 1980s, China’s authorities seemed reluctant to acknowledge that their own country might soon have a similar problem. Fears were expressed in some quarters that if it refused to engage with realities, China might, like South Africa, wake up to find that intransigence had allowed its AIDS problem to become enormous.

Amity initiatives are helping AIDS-affected families like this one

Fortunately, that has not happened and China is now taking many HIV/AIDS education initiatives and welcoming advice from experts overseas. In November 2003 the United Nations was reported as estimating the rate of HIV infection among China’s adults as 0.1 per cent, though in a country as populous as China, even so small a percentage can mean a large number of infections.

China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, has played an important part in breaking down the taboo and stigmatisation surrounding the condition. On December 1, 2003 – International AIDS Day – in a highly significant gesture he paid a public visit to some AIDS patients in Beijing. And last year, on the eve of the United Nations HIV/AIDS meeting in Bangkok, he warned the Chinese of the possible scale of the epidemic facing them.

Each time they give 300cc of blood they are paid a meagre sum equivalent to about US$5.50. More often than not, however, the blood is drawn with used, unsterilised syringes, producing the widespread transmission of HIV

Last year, too, Zhang Liwei, the Deputy General Secretary of the Amity Foundation, which partners UBS in the Amity Printing Company, wrote a series of articles documenting the Foundation’s own response to the crisis in the Amity Newsletter.

Uncontrolled

“Cases are increasing at such a dramatic rate that the worst estimates put the number of infected people at 10 million by the end of the year 2010 if the current situation remains uncontrolled,” he wrote, adding that China’s HIV-positive population was increasing by 30 per cent a year, with people from all occupations being infected.

He went on to describe the work which Amity began with the AIDS Prevention Program it started in Yunnan Province, south-east China, in 1996. It offers training courses for AIDS educators at county, town and village level, and the education/ prevention message goes out in textbooks, pamphlets, posters, and via radio, television, films, videos and school blackboards. Even house-to-house visits are made. Evaluation concluded that this community-based approach is the most effective way to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS and that a body of educators was needed to do this work.

Acute poverty

At the end of the three-year program in 1998, Amity began a second, geographically expanded program in 1999. A new element of counselling for HIV-positive people and their families was introduced, with medical check-ups and advice for HIV-positive people, and free food and free treatment for people living in acute poverty.

More recently, Amity has formed a partnership with the churches in Yunnan and Henan provinces, holding courses to equip leaders and members as educators for local communities. The churches then organised further education by any means they could with local resources.

After training, members of one church in Henan province wrote some short plays on HIV/AIDS, performing them at the church’s Christmas services. Another fellowship went to nearby villages to educate farmers using blackboards and posters; a Christian-based hospital started teaching patients about HIV/AIDS whilst they were waiting to see doctors; churches in Yunnan prepared a variety of reference materials on HIV/AIDS for use by Christians; yet other churches started home visits to AIDS patients and began some fundraising to help families affected by the disease.

Fear of contact

These and other Amity initiatives undertaken since have seen a rise in awareness among farmers of the need to prevent HIV/AIDS, the fear of contact with people with AIDS replaced by initiatives to help them, churches helping hospitals extend services to rural areas, and so on.

Besides 200,000 copies each of publications such as A Guide to HIV/AIDS Pastoral Counselling, What is AIDS? and HIV/AIDS Prevention, Amity has produced 60,000 sets of educational posters and, in conjunction with the China Health Education Association, the first VCD on HIV/AIDS in China.

Even more than unprotected sexual contact, the primary cause of the spread of HIV/AIDS in China is blood transfusion. Poor people in rural villages are tempted into selling their blood to unscrupulous ‘blood snakeheads’. (The snakehead is a predatory native Chinese fish but the name is now applied to people operating illegal blood collection centres.)

This has resulted in one provincial Christian Council proposing a collaboration with UBS’s Asia Opportunity. In its document the Council describes the plight of families in certain badly affected counties and outlines its planned response.

Sell their blood

The motive for villagers to sell their blood is always to try and improve their financial situation: so that they can pay their children’s school fees, for example. Each time they give 300cc of blood they are paid a meagre sum equivalent to about US$5.50. More often than not, however, the blood is drawn with used, unsterilised syringes, producing the widespread transmission of HIV.

The Council highlights the case of a village of 1,300 inhabitants where more than 400 people contracted AIDS this way, 120 of them members of the church. Although there is now a greater awareness of the risks of selling blood, it can take between five and ten years for the virus to develop into full-blown AIDS, and a recent surge in the death rate has seen 103 villagers die with the condition.

Stigma

Due to the lack of proper understanding and the stigma attached to anyone known to be HIV-positive, many people who recognise their symptoms do not seek treatment early enough. Others, once they have felt the effect of being ostracised by their families and their community, and after their children have been ejected from schools, have resorted to revenge, spreading the infection deliberately.

Following the example of loving and caring for others given by Jesus in Matthew 25: 35–36, the Christian Council is seeking to reach out to people with the hope offered by the Gospel. It proposes to target the poor with three approaches:

• holding AIDS-awareness talks and information-sharing sessions about AIDS prevention;
• forming groups to visit AIDS patients and families regularly, delivering medicine and other necessities;
• providing financial or other help, such as the donation of livestock or poultry, to those whose condition stops them from earning their living in other ways.