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Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
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Orphanage workers ease the plight of China's AIDS children
By Royston Chan |
December 3, 2009, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE second story of a nondescript building in Fuyang City in east China's Anhui Province houses HIV-positive orphans, but unlike many other similar establishments, there are no signboards outside.
A stigma still surrounds the disease in China, and children - probably the most vulnerable group among AIDS patients - are almost invariably barred from schools and even abandoned by their parents and relatives.
At this orphanage run by the non-government Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association, children are provided with food, lodging, education and badly needed drugs to help them control the human immunodeficiency virus which causes AIDS.
The children play games and attend classes, while the association also checks on those who live at home.
"Our children have a healthier state of mind now. When I first started to get to know these children, they had low self-esteem and were afraid of being discriminated against by others," association Director Zhang Ying said.
"After these few years, by staging different kinds of activities for them, the children no longer feel inferior and are more confident about themselves."
One of the biggest difficulties is getting the children to take their medication regularly.
HIV is infamous for the speed with which it mutates and incorrect use of drugs will quickly result in drug resistance - meaning the patient has to take stronger drugs which may not be available in the country.
Chen Xueyan, 9, lives with her grandmother in their dilapidated village home near Fuyang. She contracted HIV from her deceased mother, who was infected when she sold blood.
Sun Panpan, a staff worker with the Fuyang association, said Chen had previously been taking incorrect dosages of HIV drugs as her father and grandmother had not been monitoring her closely.
"If she persists with such incorrect intake of these medicines over a long period of time, there is a possibility of her becoming immune to the medicine. Then, she would have to change the kind of medicine she is taking," Sun said.
China's total HIV cases number about 740,000, of which about 100,000 have full-blown AIDS. About 50,000 Chinese have died of AIDS since the nation's first case in 1985. Some 10,000 children in China are HIV-positive, due mainly to botched blood transfusions or mother-to-child transmission.
The children mostly live in Henan and Anhui provinces, where China's AIDS epidemic took off in the 1990s because of commercial blood selling schemes that resulted in entire villages becoming infected. They can also be found in Yunnan Province in the southwest, a drug-trading hub.
Some children have lost both parents to AIDS and are now facing another challenge - how to survive.
China guarantees free drugs for children but there are few pediatric drugs available. Care givers need to pound into powder pills meant for adults and divide them into smaller portions.
The Clinton Foundation gave China its first batch of pediatric drugs to fight HIV in 2005, but only 250 benefited.
Some NGOs are now making regular visits to the homes of these children to make sure they take their medication correctly.
A stigma still surrounds the disease in China, and children - probably the most vulnerable group among AIDS patients - are almost invariably barred from schools and even abandoned by their parents and relatives.
At this orphanage run by the non-government Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association, children are provided with food, lodging, education and badly needed drugs to help them control the human immunodeficiency virus which causes AIDS.
The children play games and attend classes, while the association also checks on those who live at home.
"Our children have a healthier state of mind now. When I first started to get to know these children, they had low self-esteem and were afraid of being discriminated against by others," association Director Zhang Ying said.
"After these few years, by staging different kinds of activities for them, the children no longer feel inferior and are more confident about themselves."
One of the biggest difficulties is getting the children to take their medication regularly.
HIV is infamous for the speed with which it mutates and incorrect use of drugs will quickly result in drug resistance - meaning the patient has to take stronger drugs which may not be available in the country.
Chen Xueyan, 9, lives with her grandmother in their dilapidated village home near Fuyang. She contracted HIV from her deceased mother, who was infected when she sold blood.
Sun Panpan, a staff worker with the Fuyang association, said Chen had previously been taking incorrect dosages of HIV drugs as her father and grandmother had not been monitoring her closely.
"If she persists with such incorrect intake of these medicines over a long period of time, there is a possibility of her becoming immune to the medicine. Then, she would have to change the kind of medicine she is taking," Sun said.
China's total HIV cases number about 740,000, of which about 100,000 have full-blown AIDS. About 50,000 Chinese have died of AIDS since the nation's first case in 1985. Some 10,000 children in China are HIV-positive, due mainly to botched blood transfusions or mother-to-child transmission.
The children mostly live in Henan and Anhui provinces, where China's AIDS epidemic took off in the 1990s because of commercial blood selling schemes that resulted in entire villages becoming infected. They can also be found in Yunnan Province in the southwest, a drug-trading hub.
Some children have lost both parents to AIDS and are now facing another challenge - how to survive.
China guarantees free drugs for children but there are few pediatric drugs available. Care givers need to pound into powder pills meant for adults and divide them into smaller portions.
The Clinton Foundation gave China its first batch of pediatric drugs to fight HIV in 2005, but only 250 benefited.
Some NGOs are now making regular visits to the homes of these children to make sure they take their medication correctly.
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