A university student surnamed Lin recently took the unusual step
of attending a lecture on the prevention of HIV/AIDS together with
her parents at her home in Yichun city in northeast China's Heilongjiang
Province.
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"Many young people are too shy to talk about sex-related issues
with their parents," said Lin, "but only after we understand such
issues can we protect ourselves."
The lecture, jointly organized by the "Harbin friends' hotline”
and the Harbin Sanitation and Epidemic Prevention Center, attracted
more than 60 local citizens like Lin and her parents.
As China's first hotline on homosexual health, the "Harbin
friends' hotline", took the lead among a dozen similar hotlines
nationwide, all based in China's big cities, to spread sex-related
knowledge to small places like Yichun.
Topics candidly discussed during the lecture, like safe sex,
prevention of venereal disease and HIV/AIDS and psychological
support for groups exposed to sexually transmitted diseases, are
often taboo subjects for discussion in Chinese families.
"Lin's participation with her parents indicates that the
attitude toward sex among Chinese families, especially among the
younger generation, is marching towards maturity," said Zhang
Jingdong, an official with the Harbin Sanitation and Epidemic
Prevention Center, one of the organizers.
Official figures released by China's Ministry of Health show
that HIV sufferers number more than 1 million in China. Both the
number of patients falling ill with the disease and the death toll
is on the rise, and the number of people infected because of unsafe
sex is also growing.
In 2002, China reported some 9,824 newly infected HIV patients,
up 19.5 percent on the previous year. Of that figure, some 1,045
were full-blown AIDS patients and 363 died.
Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Commission for Population
and Family Planning, warned that AIDS has entered its rapid growth
stage in China, and among all HIV patients, young people from 15 to
29 years old account for 60 percent.
"An effective way of prevention is to educate the younger
generation with the possible transmission methods of the disease,
proper means of prevention and appropriate moral standards so as to
enable them to protect themselves", said Zhang.
A primary school teacher attending the lecture said she was
often too embarrassed to talk about sex with her students.
"After learning about the proper way of communication during the
lecture, I'm confident of conducting healthy and helpful
communication with the kids in the future," she added.
Though the lecture has been a success, Zhang Jingdong was both
pleased and worried.
"We realized once again that the general public are poor in
knowledge about HIV/AIDS," said Zhang, citing as proof that few
participants knew how the disease was transmitted.
"We will continue with similar activities in remote rural areas
in the future," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency August 11, 2003)