|
Party school raises AIDS awareness
By Zhang Feng (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-12-14 00:09
What is the weakest, but most important sector of China's HIV/AIDS prevention
and control network?
One answer to the question, many people believe, is the awareness of
officials at various levels.
One key to the problem has been explored after three years of experiments and
efforts at the Party School of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee.
As the top training centre for almost all the Party's middle and high-ranking
officials, the school is an ideal place to raise HIV/AIDS awareness among
officials, said Mao Qun'an, spokesman of the Ministry of Health.
"The reason is very simple: it is these officials who put the central
government's political commitment on HIV/AIDS control into practice," Mao told
China Daily.
Lectures on HIV/AIDS have become an extracurricular training course, paid
increasing attention to by students, and have served to change attitudes towards
the disease.
The HIV/AIDS issue has been in discussion since 2001 at the school as one
topic of public health problems taught by Zhang Wenkang, former Chinese health
minister, Mao added.
However, for a long time, students have thought such lectures out of place,
said Jin Wei, a professor at the school who masterminded a HIV/AIDS policy
education programme in 2001.
To them, such matters should be the business of health departments and have
little to do with them, Jin said.
Knowledge of HIV/AIDS and control policies is also quite poor among officials
from various parts of China, which currently has about 840,000 sufferers.
According to a poll taken in the school in 2001, about 23 per cent of the 400
respondents had no idea about China's long and medium term programme for
HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control (1998-2010), a document approved by the State
Council in 1998.
The poll also revealed some 36 per cent believed mosquitoes could transmit
the virus.
Public and official awareness has been raised in the recent years, especially
after visits by Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao to AIDS patients in
2003 and 2004 respectively, said Mao.
However, the visits are not enough if there are no follow-up measures to
strengthen the HIV/AIDS education of present and future officials, said Ray Yip,
director of the Beijing office of the Global AIDS Programme of the United
States.
"The education of Party officials now makes me believe that the Party has
sincerely taken responsibility for HIV/AIDS control, and do not see it as only
an affair of the government," Yip said.
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top China
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
