Society
AIDS and the elderly: More elderly afflicted with HIV
By Cao Li in Guangzhou and Shan Juan in Beijing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-11 08:24
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Hao Yang with the Ministry of Health agreed and said: "More activities to spread anti-HIV knowledge will be held in neighborhood communities to show people, particularly the elderly how to protect."
Wan, along with a team of volunteers, has been running a safe sex awareness program targeting low-end prostitutes in Sichuan since 2005. The project is supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an international financing project.
"We started by making friends with some of the women and encouraged them to spread the knowledge to their peers. Then we managed to talk to some clients, as well as owners of commercial sex venues," said Wan.
The team holds community lectures for elderly men and promise small gifts for those who come. Wan said they have so far been well attended.
"We tell them not go to prostitutes, but we also give them information on what to do to stay safe if they decide to go, and what they should do if they find a problem or need help," he said. "Men sometimes dial the hotlines for the local disease control offices during the lectures."
Prevention projects are not expensive, require few resources and pay large dividends, said Wan, who revealed that after just a year of lectures, condom use among clients of low-cost prostitutes rose to almost 70 percent.
"It is difficult for the authorities to help those in the illegal commercial sex at the same as trying to clamp down on them," she said. "The country's disease control departments, who lead most programs, are not able to handle such a huge task."
One solution could be involving neighborhood committees and local women's federations in the nation's war on AIDS.
"Raising awareness among female sex workers and their male clients should be part of their everyday activities," she said.
