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China AIDS Awareness And Support Group Loving Source Shuts Down

A student volunteer signs up for activities on World AIDS Day.

LovingSource, a non-governmental AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) awareness and support organization in China, has been forced to shut down by the Chinese government’s Beijing Tax Bureau. The AIDS group’s efforts concentrated on helping AIDS-afflicted people and orphans, mainly in China’s Henan province. Zen Jiyang, wife of one of the AIDS organization’s founders, Hu Jia, announced on her website it is closing down because of pressure from tax authorities.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in China

China has a 2008 population of 1.331,400,000 billion, which makes up 22% of the global population. In 2007 39,000 of its
population died from Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome was first reported in 1982 by fourteen nations. It is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which attacks the human immune system, leaving its host susceptible to opportunistic infections (infections caused by bacteria, virus, fungi, and protozoa) and tumors (a solid mass of abnormally grown tissue, which could be benign, pre-malignant, or cancerous/malignant). 740,000 of China’s population have HIV, 105,000 of which have AIDS. China’s first AIDS case was twenty-five years ago in 1985, in which a traveler from abroad died in Beijing, China’s capital. China has a low AIDS prevalent rate, 0.057%. However, high infection among the country’s sub-population, mainly in Henan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces persists, a major health threat to the national population. In 1987 chinese public health authorities claimed AIDS as a confined problem in the republic, since homosexuality was thought of as its main cause until the disease became the leading cause of mortality, ahead of tuberculosis and rabies, in 2009. The 1990’s press reports showed a large number of the country’s AID’s infected population acquired the virus from blood donation and heterosexual sex. It would take the next decade, which is the current millennium and the 2003 Guangdong outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Disease, a pandemic that infected 37 countries, to prompt China’s Health Minister to potent action because of public health’s effect on economic and social stability. He recognized the battle against AIDS as a ‘long-term war’, requesting the doubling of China’s $12.5 million AIDS fund.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Support Group LovingSource

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, known as ‘aizibing’, or the ‘loving capitalism disease’ was first reported in 1985 in China. Wan Yanhai is the director of the country’s first AIDS awareness group, called Aizhixing Institute of Health
Education. He has set up an unprecedented HIV/AIDS telephone hotline in China, where people can get information on the
disease; made efforts in organizing a public forum on AIDS and an AIDS awareness workshop, Blood Safety, AIDS, and Legal Human Rights, which he was forced to cancel. For Wan Yanhai’s AIDS awareness efforts he had been fired from a public health official post, picked up by police after attending a film screening at a Beijing gay and lesbian film festival, charged with leaking government internal report on a scandal in Henan province, and several times detained. He has fled to America, citing government persecution. In July 2000, Hu Jia and Wan Yanhai met. Hu Jia, then became involved in AIDS prevention work. He is one of the founders of the non-profit, non-governmental AIDS awareness group LovingSource. Beijing LovingSource Information Center or LovingSource was founded in April, 2004 and situated in Tongzhou District, Beijing. It has partnered with AIDS Relief Fund for China, UNICEF, Oxfam (Hong Kong), China AIDS Fund, Global Fund for Children, The Global Fund, Clinton Foundation, Sunshine Doctor Programme, Global Environment Institute, Huaqiao Foundation, Aixin Foundation, Chinese Association of STD & AIDS Prevention and Control Epidemiology Section, and Wuhan Zhongnan Hospital. Its mission statement is about integrating programs meant to provide care, education, and education to adults and children affected with AIDS in China’s rural communities, improve the quality of life of people with HIV/AIDS, and promote an environment conducive to the upbringing of children affected by AIDS. Its goal is health for each and everyone, thus protecting and promoting individual and general human dignity.

Beijing LovingSource Information Center AIDS Support Projects

Among LovingSource’s projects were the Aiyuan Newsletter, an information resource on the AIDS epidemic trend and relief
efforts in China and the programs, work, and measures established and taken by LovingSource. It also served as a support newsletter platform for volunteers in AIDS awareness and relief efforts to share their experiences; Rural Cooperative Project, which offered technical training and cultivated self-help livelihood programs among those affected by AIDS; Emergency Fund, which was supported by the AIDS Relief Fund for China, provided emergency funds and covered medical and funeral costs; Bursaries for Students From AIDS-affected Families, which helped AIDS-affected families’ children complete the obligatory nine-year education; Care for HIV-carrier Children, jointly funded by the World Children’s Fund, UNICEF, and the Clinton Foundation, encouraged rapport among health care providers, guardians, and children with HIV; Drug Compliance Education, in collaboration with Sunshine Doctor Program, held monthly joint consultations among medical health experts and local health doctors to establish efficient and effective treatment plans and work out difficult cases, thereby reducing AIDS-related death; the Rural Adolescence Education Program, which educated teenagers in areas with a high incidence of AIDS on sex and social and coping skills to prevent and better deal with AIDS; and the Pen-Pal Club. LovingSource selected university student volunteers to act as family members or surrogates to children from rural AIDS families through regular correspondence, phone calls, and home visits.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Support Group LovingSource Shuts Down

China is struggling to control activism and the emergence of grass-roots groups and organizations in its territory, against which it is strong to prevent from veering towards a political stance against the government. Hu Jia’s wife, Zeng Jiyan,
posted on her website that LovingSource is closing down due to pressure from Beijing Tax Bureau, the same authority
responsible for the dissolution in 2009 of legal aid group Gongmeng, which has taken under its wing most of the republic’s
sensitive cases. Gongmeng was fined 1.4 million yuan or $206,000. Beijing Tax Bureau is demanding a comprehensive audit of the AID’s support organization’s accounts. For “”inciting subversion of state power and the socialist system”, Hu Jia has
been in prison since his sentencing on April 3, 2008.

References:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101111/ap_on_re_as/as_china_aids_group;_ylt=AiypXnIlBzQr3uznxjm4tPNzfNdF

http://www.china-aids.org/index.php?action=front&id=22&type=view_directory

December 20, 2010 - Posted by chanelnichols | Health, New, News, Society | Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in China, Beijing LovingSource Information Center, Human Immunodeficiency Virus