China was urged on Friday to be more transparent and to release figures detailing the number of people infected by Aids after selling their blood through government approved or managed collection centres.
Last December former health minister Zhang Wenkang acknowledged that the spread of HIV through blood plasma collection in the early 1990s had affected 23 of China’s 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.
But no specific data has been released.
”What is the situation in the areas where Aids was spread because of blood collection activities that were not regulated or were illegal,” the Beijing-based Aizhi Institute said in a letter to Health Minister Wu Yi.
The institute, which fights institutional neglect of China’s emerging Aids crisis, is headed by China’s foremost Aids activist Wan Yantai, who was detained last year but has since been released.
”What are the names of the provinces, the cities and districts?” it asked.
”How many people were contaminated in each area? What is the extent of the contamination among the donors and the receivers of blood in each place?”
The letter demands China show transparency with Aids, as it showed during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome crisis.
The Institute also asked for the names of the 100 ”model zones” where the government decided in March to launch a campaign of prevention and information on Aids.
”The transparency of information is needed in order to avoid the misuse and the diversion of funds allocated by the government or applied for from the United Nations [UN],” said the letter.
According to UN estimates, between 800 000 and 1,5-million people in China had HIV by December 2001, and the number could reach 10-million by 2010.
Since the government finally admitted to the problem in December 2001 after initial silence, there have been increasing demands by those affected for access to better treatment and care.
Earlier this week, rights groups said they had evidence that China was stepping up arbitrary arrests and violence against HIV-positive villagers protesting for more government help.
The United States’s most senior expert on infectious diseases Julie Gerberding warned recently that China, along with India, was facing an Aids ”catastrophe”. – Sapa-AFP