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AIDS risk high for migrant workers: doctor
(Shenzhen Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-10 12:45 China could face a tragic surge in HIV/AIDS cases
unless it curbed the spread of the disease among the vast country’s transient
rural workforce, a Chinese health expert said Thursday.
Poorly educated migrant workers had highly risky sexual practices, said Wan
Shaoping, a medical doctor and project officer with the China-U.K. HIV/AIDS
Prevention and Care Project in southwestern Sichuan Province.
Wan told a health seminar in Hong Kong that there were at least 100 million
such workers in China.
“The Chinese Government is now putting a lot of attention on HIV/AIDS, but we
have to focus on the most risky group, this floating population,” Wan said.
“Otherwise, they will carry the virus all over the country and it will cause
a tragedy in the country’s public health system.
“According to surveys, 10 percent to 48 percent of males in this floating
population exhibit highly risky sexual behavior,” Wan said, adding that they
often visited prostitutes.
“And in this risky group of males, 70 percent have never used condoms, and
most of them were unaware of the dangers of HIV and AIDS,” he said.
Among the women, many often resort to becoming sex workers when they cannot
find other work.
“These women have up to four customers a day. They spread the virus and the
men take the virus all over the country,” Wan said.
“So their threat to China’s HIV/AIDS problem is huge.”
China has recently paid more attention to the epidemic. It has sent teams of
counselors to villages across the country to teach safe sex. But Wan said that
was not enough and that more effort must be put into educating migrant workers.
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