Disturbingly high rate of HIV among Shanghai students

By Ni Dandan Source:Global Times Published: 2015-12-8 18:53:01

Shanghai health authorities recently announced that thus far this year there have been nearly 2,000 reported HIV and AIDS cases among city residents. This news was made even more disturbing by the fact that 92 of them were high school and university students, an alarming year-on-year increase of 31 percent.

Nationwide this year, there have been over 9,000 diagnosed carriers of HIV/AIDS between the ages of 15 and 24. Combined with the Shanghai stats, this points to an emerging trend among teenaged and young-adult Chinese students - primarily male - who are contracting and spreading the deadly virus.

According to Shanghai authorities, 88 percent of the students infected with HIV or AIDS contracted it through male-on-male intercourse. Unprotected anal and oral sex were found to be the most prevalent acts among the city's young gay male community, with condom usage dangerously negligent.

Not but a decade ago, a majority of the Chinese public were completely unaware of AIDS and HIV. But due to more comprehensive reporting in mainland media as well as national and local sexual education programs, AIDS and HIV are practically household terms today.

Nonetheless, the social stigma surrounding the virus as "a gay disease" makes most sexually active couples afraid to get regularly tested. Among the homosexual community, many young gay Chinese men prefer to live in self-imposed ignorance and continue to practice unsafe sex with strange partners, pretending that nothing will happen.

As a reporter here in Shanghai, I once visited a small, dilapidated attic in an old longtang (laneway) home that had been converted into a private testing facility exclusively for the city's gay community. The not-for-profit group who ran it offered free saliva-based HIV/AIDS tests, which only took a few minutes and were completely anonymous. Sadly, the turnout was infrequent.

Unlike in Western countries, where most LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) communities are "out and proud" and have federal laws in place to protect and help HIV/AIDS carriers, in China being gay is still generally considered shameful and humiliating. Among Chinese youngsters who are discovering their sexual identity, there is more fear of being publicly outed as gay than fear of being infected with a deadly virus.

Ironically, Shanghai has been called "China's most gay-friendly city," as the municipality hosts an annual Shanghai Pride gay festival (founded in 2009 by expat website Shanghaiist's openly gay owner Kenneth Tan) as well as an LGBT Tourism Week every October that attracts tens of thousands of gays from all over the world who use Shanghai as a stage to "come out of the closet." Shanghai has also numerous LGBT bars and nightclubs that have become the destination of choice not just for local homosexuals but also transgender refugees from the Philippines.

But while most adult homosexuals who frequent such venues and events are generally more aware of the dangers of unsafe sex, younger gays who prefer to stay in the shadows continue to disregard the importance of condom usage. It may be hard to stomach the idea of some teenage boy, red scarf still around his neck and a school uniform at his ankles, having unprotected anal sex with one of his "comrades" in their high school toilet stalls, but that is exactly what is happening.

AIDS and HIV are, unfortunately, not the only thing going around in China's LGBT communities. Hepatitis B is another dangerous sexually transmitted disease, extremely common because it shows no symptoms. The National Health and Family Planning Commission said in 2013 that among the world's 350 million Hep-B carriers, nearly 100 million are Chinese. HIV and Hep-B co-infection leads to increased morbidity and mortality compared with either infection alone.

The new figures issued by the city's health bureau will hopefully not be wielded like a weapon by local authorities to shut down LGBT establishments and events. Instead, they should be disseminated among the general populous to instigate change in our deep-rooted prejudices against homosexuals. Only with greater awareness and education, timely detection and proper medication can we as a society contain the spread of AIDS and HIV among our children and students.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.

Posted in: TwoCents, Metro Shanghai, Pulse

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