Rural doctors cut HIV/AIDS infection in China

Doctor Qin Jiang commutes from his clinic to rural homes and then onto a "red light zone" in the backstreets of Bainong, an impoverished village of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

He is often seen within crowds in the center of the village handing out AIDS-prevention brochures and answering people's questions on how to protect themselves from infection.

Qin, 49, knows who of the 2,000 villagers regularly visit underground brothels in the backstreets. These people, mostly bachelors aged over 30 -- an age considered too old to remain single in the Chinese countryside, are the most susceptible group, according to Qin.

"There're about 28 bachelors in the village," he said.

They regularly visit brothels and pay a meager 13 yuan for prostitutes. But a lack of protection has caused AIDS and other venereal diseases to spread. Two villagers have died of AIDS.

As the only doctor at the village clinic, Qin spends most of his time visiting these bachelors. "I try to convince them that they have done nothing wrong, and their needs are perfectly healthy. I just remind them to use condoms and receive health checks to minimize infection risks."

He has also persuaded some sex workers to leave the trade, which is illegal in China.

Guangxi has China's second largest number of HIV/AIDS patients, next only to Yunnan Province on the southwestern border.

Thanks to the efforts of Qin and thousands of other rural doctors, the number of new HIV/AIDS infections in Longzhou county has reduced by 21 percent from last year, said Zhang Yi, deputy chief of the county's disease prevention and control center.

The impoverished Longzhou county is one of the worst AIDS-infected regions in Guangxi. At the end of last year, the county reported 1,070 HIV-carriers and confirmed AIDS patients. Seventy-five percent of the cases were transmitted through sex.

In 2010, the regional government launched a three-tiered prevention system involving rural doctors at village clinics to deliver AIDS prevention services to every door.

To date, about 37,500 rural doctors are at the forefront of AIDS prevention in Guangxi.

From November 2011, these doctors received special training offered by local health authorities and NGOs, armed with counseling and communication skills in order to promote AIDS prevention knowledge among villagers and sex workers.

Zhang said the move has proven effective. "Seventy new infections were reported from January to May, 21 percent down from the same period last year."

The prevention system has also proven effective in Pingxiang, a city on the China-Vietnam border, where new infections were down by 14.8 percent in the first half of the year, said Zhang.

In Bama county, an autonomous county of the ethnic Yao people, village doctors have composed dos and don'ts about HIV/AIDS prevention into folk songs, a popular means of entertainment among locals.

The songs, on CDs, are distributed to every household.

Luo Mingxue, 57, said he was unable to read the booklet handed out to him with HIV/AIDS prevention tips. But by listening to the songs, he knows precisely how disease spreads and how to avoid risks.