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opinion:
our view
China ignores
AIDS
Last week, word reached
the rest of the world that, like many countries before it, China
is facing an AIDS epidemic within its shores.
Rather than take
a clue from countries with previous experience and admit to
its problem and seek assistance from the rest of the world,
Chinese officials chose instead to stick their head in the
sand and ignore the problem entirely.
This is rather
similar to the way Ronald Reagan chose to deal with the same
situation in the United States in the early 1980s, and the
delay in confronting the disease had deadly consequences.
Even now, Chinese
officials are disputing with international aid agencies about
the numbers of people infected, but for a state where propaganda
was the norm for decades, openness come in small increments.
This is just the
latest trial to emerge from the country that hopes to have
its hosting of the Olympics be a springboard to the world's
economic and cultural community.
Hiding AIDS patients
in remote villages and continuing human rights abuses do not
make that transition smoother.
And as it developed
in most other countries around the world, the burgeoning crisis
in China is, at its base, an economic issue.
With the poor in
the United States and Africa, two of the heavier hit areas,
a lack of basic medical care and knowledge contributed to
the disease's spread.
In China, the spread
has been linked to the practice in poor communities of selling
blood for money.
Without a solid
infrastructure providing clean needles and facilities, the
spread of AIDS was inevitable.
Here, a lesson
could have been learned from the United States where the disease
widely spread through blood transfusions before anyone became
aware of the dangers.
The problem facing
the Chinese government now is to fully admit to the size and
complexity of the spread of the disease and seek the help
and knowledge of those countries that have been fighting the
disease for years.
To show an openness
and willingness to open up to and work with the rest of the
world might be another uncomfortable aspect of China's entrance
into the global marketplace, but the lives of those already
infected and those inevitably to be affected depend on it.
Also of great concern
now is how to divide the pieces of the pie representing funds
and drugs in combating AIDS.
That we will leave
to our esteemed government officials in Washington to devise
new excuses on limiting funding and to the altruistic pharmaceutical
companies so concerned with profits.
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