Guo Weigui, a trained doctor, spends most of his time visiting
beauty salons, bars, massage parlors and saunas where he tries to
ensure that hospitality industry workers use condoms.
Guo works for the disease control and prevention center in
downtown Beihai, a coastal city in southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region that receives
about 4 million tourists a year. He also leads a 15-member AIDS
prevention team that hands out condoms and leaflets on how to
prevent AIDS and venereal diseases.
"Our team covers 90 percent of the hospitality services in
downtown Beihai and 80 percent of their workers," said Guo. "We
make sure each worker is visited at least once every two
months."
Beihai reported the first HIV infection case in 1998 and the
number of HIV-positive people had risen to 93 by last October. "The
figure is the lowest for the 14 cities in Guangxi, because we
started intervention earlier than others," said Guo.
Guo said 73 percent of the hospitality industry workers they
visit use condoms now, compared with 30 percent when they started
to intervene in 1999.
But initially their actions drew a very poor welcome. "Some
people were hostile and even tore up the leaflets we handed out
right under our noses," he said. "When I first visited a beauty
salon with a colleague, no one looked up at us from the mah-jong
table. We waited for an hour, then left and came back the next
day."
They visited the salon at least five times before one of the
girls broke the ice with "why don't you take a seat and leave your
leaflets on the table?"
"So step by step, they softened and we were able to strike up a
conversation," said Guo. "When they understood we were there for
their good, the girls abandoned their hostile attitude."
Today, Guo and his colleagues can drop in at any time for
friendly chats with the girls, some of whom have followed their
advice to take regular checkups.
Guo's team also host parties and karaokes at hospitality
facilities. Included in the sessions are quiz games about how to
prevent AIDS and other venereal diseases.
Many other Chinese cities have laid down the law for
prostitutes, insisting on 100 percent condom use to stop the spread
of AIDS.
Harbin in northeastern Heilongjiang Province went one step further:
it provided an AIDS prevention training program last year to 180
female commercial sex workers who work for the local hospitality
industry.
The program, which taught sex workers about AIDS prevention and
the importance of using condoms, caused a social outcry as some
citizens viewed it as open recognition of the illegal sex industry,
or even an encouragement of prostitution.
"Protecting sex workers from AIDS is an urgent task which does
not contradict China's ban on prostitution," said Wen Yingchun,
director of the AIDS prevention and control institute under
Harbin's disease control and prevention center.
Local police authorities said AIDS prevention training courses
should in no way be construed as a sign that the sex industry will
be legalized.
The Ministry of Health said China had 183,733 HIV/AIDS cases at
the end of October, up nearly 30 percent from 144,089 at the end of
2005, and the virus is seemingly spreading from high-risk groups to
the general public.
In Beihai, 24 new HIV-positive cases were reported in 2006.
Besides Guo and his official AIDS prevention team, grass-roots
volunteer groups hand out condoms and brochures at the city's
railway stations, wharves, construction sites and communities,
local health authorities told Xinhua.
Many other Chinese cities have taken HIV/AIDS prevention to the
masses.
Construction workers at the building site of Beijing's CCTV
tower were given condoms and brochures touting safe sex and
HIV/AIDS prevention on the eve of Dec. 1, World AIDS Day.
In December, 5,000 Beijing taxi drivers handed out HIV/AIDS
information leaflets to passengers.
The total number of cases in China -- taking into account those
who are unaware that they carry the HIV virus -- is probably around
650,000, according to estimates by experts from the United Nations
and the Ministry of Health.
The Ministry said by Oct. 31 last year, 12,464 people had died
in China as a result of illnesses associated with the HIV
virus.
(Xinhua News Agency January 17, 2007)