CHINA: Head of Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS says international funding for groups fighting the virus in China should continue despite country's increasing wealth

Record ID: 402746

  • Title: CHINA: Head of Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS says international funding for groups fighting the virus in China should continue despite country's increasing wealth
  • Date: 12th July 2011
  • Summary: BEIJING, CHINA (JULY 11, 2011) (REUTERS) NEWS CONFERENCE ON THE FIRST BRICS HEALTH MINISTER'S MEETING IN PROGRESS JOURNALISTS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF JOINT UNITED NATIONS PROGRAMME ON HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), MICHEL SIDIBE, ADDRESSING NEWS CONFERENCE CAMERAMAN FILMING SIDIBE IN INTERVIEW WITH JOURNALIST (SOUNDBITE) (English) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF JOINT UNITED NATIONS PROGRA
  • Embargoed: 27th July 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China, China
  • Country: China
  • Topics: International Relations,Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA2DM030FLAIWCUKWVS1C7GPYSK
  • Story Text: The head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS said on Monday (July 11) that the U.N. should not halt its AIDS funding to China, rebuffing critics who say the world's second-largest economy should not be a recipient of such aid.
    Several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in fighting AIDS in China have told Reuters that they are facing more difficulties in obtaining donations from developed nations because of the country's wealth.
    Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said international funding in China was helping developing treatments.
    "This funding is a catalytic fund. It is not so much about the funding itself, because China will be able to pay and to take, certainly, care of its own people. But it is, this catalytic fund, is helping to bring innovation. It is the fund is helping to make a difference in terms of reaching most at risk population by experimenting through the process of establishing a new link between the government and civil society and NGOs," Sidibe told Reuters.
    Sidibe is in China for the first BRICS Health Ministers meeting, made up of the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
    Britain said in early March it would stop funding 16 countries, including China, as it focuses its overseas aid budget on helping the poorest or conflict-ridden countries.
    Sidibe praised the China for its progress in dealing with the people with the virus.
    "We were having travel restrictions. People were not allowed to come here when they were HIV positive. And that is not there anymore. We were talking about how to make sure that registration of community-based organisation could be possible. Today, I was with Minister of Civil Affairs. They've changed the law, they are trying to make it more flexible," he said.
    HIV/AIDS became a major problem for China in the 1990s when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers in rural Henan province became infected through botched blood-selling schemes, but the virus is now primarily spread in the country via sexual contact.
    Beijing was initially slow to acknowledge the threat of the disease but has since stepped up the fight against it, spending more on prevention programmes, launching schemes to give universal access to anti-retroviral drugs to contain the disease, and introducing policies to curb discrimination.
    The world's most populous nation -- with 1.34 billion people -- had 740,000 people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, with 105,000 AIDS patients, in 2009, according to state news agency Xinhua, citing United Nations estimates.
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