Teacher Chen Hong discusses AIDS prevention with students at Longquanyi No 7 Middle School in Chengdu, Sichuan province. YANG WANLI/CHINA DAILY
A campaign to provide information and help prevent young people from becoming infected is paying dividends.
'The enemy we are fighting is HIV/AIDS, instead of carriers (people who are HIV-positive) and patients (those with full-blown AIDS). Prejudice toward AIDS patients could be more harmful than the disease itself," said Jing Xi, a ninth-grade student at Longquanyi No 7 Middle School in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China.
It was the first time the 14-year-old student had shared her opinions about AIDS with her teacher and classmates. Jing is one of tens of thousands of young Chinese who have benefited from the "Youth Love Station", a project sponsored by the AIDS Prevention Education Project for Chinese Youth, a nonprofit organization that provides education to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among students.
The project uses sex education classes to give students a basic understanding of AIDS－how it attacks the immune system, the transmission routes and high-risk behavior, for example unsafe or unprotected sex, among both heterosexuals and homosexuals.
"It's the first time I have spoken about AIDS and sex in front of the students. I used to be very shy," said Chen Hong, the lecturer. After months of training, Chen can now use "sensitive words" such as penis and vagina without feeling embarrassed.
According to UNAIDS, the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, nearly 6,000 new HIV/AIDS carriers are reported globally every day, and one in three are in the 15 to 24 age group.
"In the past decade, the total number of HIV/AIDS carriers has declined globally, but the proportion of young carriers has risen," said Chen Zhongdan, a strategic information adviser with UNAIDS.
From 2011 to 2015, the number of AIDS carriers in China ages 15 to 24 rose by 35 percent every year, and carriers ages 18 to 22 accounted for 65 percent of all cases, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
National focus
"Education about the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, especially AIDS, should be introduced for students at high schools and colleges nationally as soon as possible," said Wang Jinxin, director of the Sex Education Center at Chengdu Technological University.
"We cannot force students to withstand their hormonal changes. Sex cannot be prevented, but we can prevent unsafe sex," he said.
