Banning AIDS patients from bath houses criticized
Print Edition
A NEW national draft regulation has kicked up a storm as it seeks to ban customers with sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS and other infectious skin diseases from entering bath houses, foot massage parlours, therapeutic hot springs or spas.
According to the regulation being drafted by the Ministry of Commerce, all business houses providing the services will have to install signs that ban people with the diseases.
People suffering from hypertension, heart diseases and alcoholics will also not be welcome, according to the draft.
But medical experts have slammed the planned move as discriminatory, saying the HIV virus that causes AIDS does not spread through public bathing facilities or spas.
Industry officials also said that the new regulations are not feasible as it is impossible for them to identify an AIDS patient by appearance only.
The draft, which is intended to regulate the business and protect the rights of the owners and customers, has strict and detailed clauses on the responsibility of business owners, who could face a fine of up to 30,000 yuan (US$4,839).
The Ministry of Commerce is seeking opinion from the public until November 11.
Lu Hongzhou, vice president of Shanghai Public Health Center and a leading AIDS expert, said: “Banning AIDS patients from using public bathing facilities and installing such a sign outside the facilities will only lead to more misunderstandings about AIDS and AIDS patients.”
Experts say no epidemiological studies have shown that people can be infected with the HIV virus just by going to bath houses. HIV virus dies soon after leaving the infected person’s body and the virus can hardly survive in the warm temperatures in bath houses.
Zhou Yanqin, vice director of Shanghai Health Supervision Agency, said the nation’s infectious disease prevention and control law, and regulation on the health of public place, have indicated that public bathing places should install signs banning people with STD and infectious skin disease from entering the facilities.
“AIDS patient is not clarified by the law and regulation and these signs are only a kind of warning without detailed clauses for inspection and punishment,” she said.
In fact, unprotected sex is the top vehicle of the spread of HIV virus in China, experts said.
About 90 percent of the HIV/AIDS cases reported in China over the past 10 years were through sexual contact, an official from the HIV/AIDS division of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in August.
About 70 percent of new cases reported in June came from heterosexual sex, and 20 percent from homosexual sex.
China had over 492,000 registered HIV/AIDS patients by October last year.
But health authorities estimate the actual number could be as high as 780,000 people, implying that a large number of cases go undetected in China.
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