ARTICLE ANALYSIS

Article Analysis

Article Analysis

In This paper I am going to provide a critical analysis of the article “Employer attitudes about people with HIV in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Chicago” which is a comparison summary of employers attitude towards HIV people.

The first case of AIDS was documented in China in 1985 and the first major outbreak was discovered among intravenous drug users in 1989 at Yunnan province in the China - Myanmar border. By 1997 all 31 provinces had one or more cases of HIV detected, and about half a dozen provinces are now regarded as significantly affected by HIV due to multiple outbreaks. Until 2000, the People's Republic of China did not regard HIV as a serious threat and made limited effort to address the problem. Starting from early 2001, there was a significant shift at the central government in acknowledging that HIV/AIDS is wide spread, and improving policy support and greater funding for the prevention and control of the epidemic. To a large extent, the central health authorities spearhead this effort. The commitment at the provincial government level, in many cases, still not fully established.

As of August 2002, the Ministry of Health estimated one million persons were estimated to be living with HIV in China, with a general population prevalence of 0.06%. This data is derived from a national surveillance system, which is mainly based on urban population. The figure is likely to be higher if taken the rural areas into account. Regardless what the total number is, looking only at overall national HIV prevalence is somewhat misleading, because the prevalence in some groups and regions are very high, despite the low national prevalence rates. What is certain is that, China had several explosive outbreaks, even in area, which did not have the traditional behavior risk factor for HIV transmission.

The national HIV surveillance system of China thus far documented an average annual increase of 30% HIV. Based on this rate, the estimated number of affected people will be 10 million by 2010, using the one million official estimates in 2002 (Figure 1). This would be a very heavy burden for the affected communities, given the fact that the government and health system are having difficulty in coping with the relatively small number of HIV affected individuals right now. Without specific and aggressive measures, this projected trend will likely become reality.

Figure 1: Projection of HIV burden for China based on currently 1 million infected with an annual increase rate of 30% (China National HIV Sentinel Surveillance System)

Nature of HIV outbreak in China - opportunity for intervention

Based on the latest national surveillance information, the general breakdown of major type of HIV transmission is shown in Figure 2.

Injection Drug Users (IDU)

Since the first major HIV outbreak, injection drug users continue to be the main route of transmission and it is well established that they are the “source population” of HIV in a given community. The 2002 official estimate attributed 68% of the currently HIV cases due to ...