The Shenzhen Municipal Chronic Diseases Hospital has revealed to the media that the hospital plans to set up the country’s first team of public health nurses in July and August. The teams will voluntarily give talks to groups of women at high-risk, working in nightclubs, dancehalls, saunas and hairdressing salons on how they can avoid harm from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It is understood the hospital aims to recruit 50 nurses who will gradually enter salons, foot-massage parlours and other venues that may offer sex services and give the women at risk information on the symptoms of AIDS, how to use condoms and how to seek treatment for AIDS. As a team of volunteers, the group’s funds will mainly come from the National Centre for Disease Control, provincial funding, the Health Bureau and from their own efforts at raising money.

From the distribution of condoms to high-risk groups, to the provision of clean needles and methadone to drug-users, to the intensive training and recruitment of these nurses to train high-risk groups, China’s AIDS prevention policies have continuously shown breakthroughs in both conceptualization and execution. This is reason to be inspired and enthused.

In fact, programmes such as those in Shenzhen, in which government departments provide the resources to organize health professionals to provide services for high risk groups, is normal practice in AIDS prevention work overseas. In countries that have been relatively successful in preventing AIDS, different government departments have different work targets for and attitudes towards high risk groups, and they have different emphases for their work. For instance, when law enforcement departments crack down on those who engage in prostitution and narcotics, the health departments don’t participate. Conversely, the health department’s main duty is to provide help to people at high risk, such as providing them with substitutes for drugs and clean needles, such as providing sex workers with condoms, medical check-ups and health training etc.

So it is apparent that in the area of AIDS prevention and treatment of high risk groups, government has moved away from a model of just cracking down to a model of simultaneously cracking down and providing services. This has become a common trend that comes from humanity’s scientific knowledge about AIDS prevention and the continuous improvement and progress of government public policy.

The pathology of AIDS may not be that different to that of influenza or fever, they are all just illnesses. Given that it is a kind of illness, it needs to be prevented and treated. Furthermore, there is no choice other than to prevent and treat it. There is no reason for us to treat those at high risk of contracting AIDS any differently just because of the way AIDS is transmitted. Red Cross workers on a battlefield would not let the fact that they may believe the war to be stupid to influence their rescue work. In the same way, we may condemn prostitution and drug-taking as immoral or even illegal and the government can crack down on such activities in order to protect mainstream social values, but none of this should influence society’s efforts to help those people, to help them prevent and treat AIDS.

Of course, in helping such people, this does not mean that the government recognizes the propriety of their actions. It is just a manifestation of the government performing its own basic duty – to protect the physical and mental health of each and every citizen. To exclude any group from public health management would be a dereliction of the government’s duty.

Therefore, when faced with AIDS prevention and treatment among high-risk groups, management should be management, services should be services, the two are not in conflict. This is the tolerance and rationality that should be shown by a government that makes public policy.

At present, the number of HIV carriers in China is the second highest in Asia, the 14th in the world. As Vice-Premier Wu Yi pointed out, China’s AIDS prevention and treatment work is at a critical juncture. As China has already banned paid blood donations, the risk of infections through cross contamination of blood has already been basically eradicated. Thus, one of the main focuses of AIDS prevention work from now on should be avoiding the transmission of HIV from high-risk groups to the general population.

This requires the government to show a little more pro-activeness and more pragmatic intervention with drug users and sex workers. The advanced training and recruitment of nurses to train people in high risk groups is a proactive and pragmatic move. We hope other localities can use this measure for reference and we hope even more that similarly advanced and even more pragmatic and original measures will continue to emerge.

Population Newspaper commentator: Yu Ping