CHINA TELLS ITS PUBLIC OF ENORMITY OF AIDS TOLL

BEIJING -- With China taking its first real steps toward a full-scale
public awareness campaign about AIDS this week, the degree of ignorance
caused by past government denial is evident in the dazed expression of Zhao
Pingyuan. Pedaling his bicycle along a narrow alleyway in the graceful old
Houhai neighborhood, Mr. Zhao, 33, stopped beside a new government AIDS
poster. He had not noticed the poster, or AIDS, before.

"I've never heard of it," he said. "I'm from Henan Province. We don't have
it in Henan." Told that Henan is an epicenter of AIDS, with huge numbers of
cases and deaths, Mr. Zhao shook his head. "There is nothing like that," he
said. "It would have been on television if people had died of AIDS." This
week, in a flurry of publicity coinciding with World AIDS Day, AIDS is
finally all over television in China. New public service announcements
promote awareness and even recommend condom use.

The most dramatic moment came on Monday night when Prime Minister Wen
Jiabao was shown comforting AIDS patients and pledging support, the first
such public appearance by a top government leader.

Mr. Wen also promised that the government would provide free AIDS drugs to
all people who needed them.

Elated AIDS advocates praised Mr. Wen's appearance as a pivotal moment that
could reduce the stigma surrounding the disease and send an important
signal to lower officials. Yet those same advocates also warned that
symbolism was not enough, and that the government must dedicate major
resources to curtailing the spread of AIDS and educating people like Mr.
Zhao. "This was like breaking the ice," said Joel Rehnstrom, the
coordinator in China for Unaids, a United Nations agency. "It's something
that a lot of people working in the AIDS field inside China and outside
have been hoping for and waiting for."

China is thought to have slightly more than one million people who are
infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, or who have already died
of AIDS. Experts say there could be 10 million cases by 2010. The disease
was initially confined to intravenous drug users, sex-trade workers and
farmers infected by a tainted blood-selling operation in central China, but
it is now spreading into the general population. Part of the problem is a
widespread lack of public awareness. A recent poll by Futures Group Europe
and Horizon Market Research found that roughly 19.9 percent of those
responding had never heard of AIDS, the state news media reported. Only
13.4 percent knew the three methods of transmission - through sex, blood
and mother-to-child breast-feeding. Only 21.4 percent of people knew they
could be infected with AIDS by having sex, and only 2.6 percent realized
that condoms could prevent transmission.

For years the government blocked Chinese media coverage of the country's
AIDS problem. Even now, Chinese and foreign reporters are detained in Henan
if they are caught interviewing AIDS patients. But AIDS advocates say the
public relations push this week represents a significant shift in attitudes
about basic awareness. "They were talking to the Chinese people," said
Odilon Couzin, whose Hong Kong-based nonprofit group, China AIDS Info,
disseminates information about the disease. "It's both symbolism and
hopefully the beginning of real action." Building public awareness is one
thing. The more difficult task, experts agree, is creating an adequate
nationwide health system to confront the disease and fulfilling the promise
to provide free antiretroviral drugs to poor AIDS patients. On Monday night
a top health official, Gao Qiang, used a television talk show to publicly
repeat an earlier pledge that a free drug program would be quickly expanded
next year to cover all people who had tested positive for the disease. Of
the estimated one million cases of H.I.V., Chinese officials say only about
80,000 people have tested positive for the virus. They have not provided
any figures about how many have been tested.

About 5,000 people are already getting antiretroviral drugs under a pilot
program in more than 100 counties, though 20 percent have dropped out of
the program because of harsh side effects. Many experts do not think that
the program can possibly be expanded by next year to cover all of the
80,000 H.I.V.-positive people.

Other tough issues also remain. The government is still weighing a needle
exchange program to reduce risks of continued spread among drug users.
Public condom dispensers are available on college campuses and outside some
public bathrooms. But experts say condoms are not available in hotels
because the police believe that they encourage prostitution. Prostitution,
meanwhile, is growing quickly.