Beijing schoolchildren face compulsory AIDS education

Jia Hepeng, 21 June 2004
Source: SciDev.Net

[BEIJING] Secondary schools in China's capital, Beijing, will soon
be required to provide children with compulsory HIV/AIDS education.
And schools in other Chinese cities are set to follow suit,
according to officials at the Ministry of Education.

Beijing's municipal commission of education announced last week that
the HIV/AIDS courses for secondary school students would begin this
autumn.

There will be four hours of HIV/AIDS-related education during each
of the first three years of secondary education. Courses will cover
the science of HIV/AIDS, how it spreads within populations, the
social and economic threats of the disease, and information about
effective disease prevention.

Beijing's move follows recommendations by the education ministry
that teaching on drug control and HIV/AIDS prevention should be
strengthened during basic education. And on 9 May 2004, the State
Council — China's cabinet — demanded that secondary schools across
the country should add education on HIV/AIDS prevention to their
normal courses.

By the end of 2003, China had reported 840,000 HIV/AIDS carriers and
patients. But researchers estimate that without effective control,
that number will reach 10 million by 2010.

The Chinese government has recently strengthened its efforts to
prevent and control the spread of HIV/AIDS. In April, the Ministry
of Health and the Ministry of Finance jointly declared to offer free
HIV/AIDS drugs to low-income rural and urban AIDS patients.

However, experts say education on HIV/AIDS, drug addiction, and sex
are still underdeveloped in the world's most populous country.
Before this year, virtually no schools in China taught pupils about
HIV/AIDS.

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