Special prisons for AIDS convicts in China

Nov 15 2005

According to the state media, in an attempt to stop the spread HIV/AIDS at least two prisons are to be build exclusively for HIV/AIDS-infected convicts.

The facilities will be built in the booming southern province of Guangdong.

Apparently there are currently 20 AIDS sufferers and 518 HIV carriers serving jail terms in Guangdong, according to the media many provincial officials have urged the government to build the hospitals as soon as possible.

An official is reported to have said that since the fatal virus is able to spread quickly in such an environment, the number of AIDS-carrying inmates would be sure to increase, posing further problems for the management.

Although China admits it has 840,000 HIV-AIDS cases among its 1.3 billion population, experts say at least a million poor farmers were infected in botched blood-selling schemes in the 1990s in the central province of Henan alone.

A top Chinese HIV expert recently echoed a grim U.N. warning that the number of HIV-AIDS cases could reach 10 million in China by 2010 if no effective measures are taken to curb the disease.