Beijing Opens First HIV Prevention Center for Students

Young men in China have one of the fastest rates of new HIV cases in the population, with 2,300 students testing positive in the first nine months of this year, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. But there is hope.  

Beijing has begun to focus prevention strategies towards high school and university students specifically. In fact, the city just opened its very first center for HIV prevention focusing on ages 15 to 24, reports China News Service. 

It’s long overdue, seeing as over 654,000 people are living with HIV or AIDS in China today, with 80 percent of new cases having contracted the virus through unprotected sex — a number that has risen 20 percent since 2008.

Within the first eight months of 2016 alone, there have been 34,000 new HIV cases, according to a CCDCP report. 

As reported by Reuters, on World AIDS Day, China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan, also a World Health Organization HIV/AIDS prevention goodwill ambassador, attended a university event in Beijing to help raise awareness among students. The message was clear: the Chinese government needs to do more about raising HIV awareness among high-risk groups. How to do it is a whole other conversation. 

“Because of reasons related to fear,” director of the Chinese National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, Wu Zunyou, said to Reuters, “exposure of their identity, exposure of the fact that they’re infected, and discrimination, those who have contracted (HIV) don’t wish to talk about their own identity as a host of the disease.”