Updated on
Summary HIV and AIDS affected patients are being denied treatment in mainstream hospitals in China.
The denial is due to the fear and ignorance about the disease. The worlds most populous nation with 1.34 billion people had 740,000 infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, with 105,000 AIDS patients, in 2009. People have been refused medical care and have been discriminated against by healthcare workers. Chinas policy that people with HIV and AIDS should only be treated in designated hospitals for treating infectious diseases has been one of the root causes for the discrimination. Beijing was initially slow to acknowledge the threat of the disease but has since stepped up the fight against it, spending more on prevention programmes, launching schemes to give universal access to anti-retroviral drugs to contain the disease, and introducing policies to curb discrimination.
