Chinese Organization Helps Kids Battle AIDS 

2009-12-01 10:17

 

Taking tablets and pills everyday has become a norm for these Chinese orphans infected with AIDS.

But medication for children is not so readily available in the country.

Many times they have to break up the adult dosage to find a suitable quantity for themselves.

Nine-year-old Chen Xueyan lives with her grandmother in a rundown house, after contracting AIDS from her deceased mother who became infected by selling blood to earn some money.

This NGO staff member says she's worried the little girl will become immune by taking the wrong dosage.

[Sun Panapn, Staff Member, Fuyang AIDS OSA]:
"If she persists with such an incorrect intake of these drugs over a long period of time, there is a possibility of her becoming immune to the medicine. Then she would have to change the kind of medicine she is taking. If this is the case, it would not be very good."

Funding has started coming in from foreign aid agencies through NGOs like the Fuyang AIDS Orphans Salvation Association.

Director and founder Zhang Ying said she is slowly seeing improved living conditions for the children.

The center runs a weekly activity program for children with AIDS as well as those with infected parents.

[Zhang Yin, Director, Fuyang AIDS OSA]:
"Our children have a healthier state of mind now. When I first started to get to know these children, they had low self-esteem and were afraid of being discriminated against by others. After these few years, by organizing different kinds of activities for them, the children no longer feel inferior and are more confident about themselves."

Overall, there are about 100,000 known AIDS cases in China, while the country says it has 10,000 children infected with HIV.

Most are found in central Henan and Anhui province, where China's AIDS epidemic took off in the 1990s, because of unhygienic commercial blood donation schemes that resulted in many villages becoming infected.