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China Exclusive: Jailed with HIV -- a struggle against despair (2) |
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20:32, July 09, 2007 |
Fan says the only two inmates who developed AIDS symptoms so far were granted medical parole and admitted into the best hospital in the provincial capital of Fuzhou where they have access to better health facilities.
More Faith Less Discrimination
Hidden deep among the lush low-lying mountains, Qingliu prison is the only grandiose, modern establishment in a sleepy ancient town called Linshe.
It is such an uneventful place that the locals still talk about Chairman Mao passing through in the 1930s as the head of a relatively weak Red Army. They say he composed a poem here to show his faith in Communist victory.
Some 75 years after Mao''s stopover, Fan and his colleagues have embarked on their own Long March -- to rehabilitate prisoners who, as AIDS victims, face a double dose of discrimination.
Given how sensitive the issue is and the negative social stigma attached to HIV/AIDS in China, Fan''s task, in a sense, is no less arduous than Mao''s revolution.
"The key to success is to give them (HIV-positive inmates) enormous faith and zero discrimination," says Fan, recalling a failure soon after the division was formed in 2005.
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