[:en]Last week I went to Jakarta with the harm reduction program director for Open Society Institute and met with a half dozen grassroots groups of injection drug users (IDU). In Indonesia, where AIDS is ravaging the country due to the rapidly-escalating use of drugs, young people have responded by starting small nonprofit groups to reach out to drug users on the street. They hand out clean needles, give advice on AIDS prevention, help people get medical care when they need it, and advocate with the local police. And they’re doing some innovative things on the human rights front, too.
China Readings for Obama
[:en]A little on the lighter side this week: The most excellent blog China Beat asked a group of scholars, journalists and the like for the four or five books they thought President Obama should read to inform himself on China.
[NEWS] Put People with AIDS in China’s Congress
[:en]This week’s blog entry is an open letter from AIDS activists Li Xige and Tian Xi calling on the National People’s Congress to appoint people with HIV/AIDS as representatives. The authors invoke Party quotes to support their argument. The demand (which comes all the way at the end) breaks new ground. Currently, there are no HIV-positive representatives in China’s Congress – or, that is, none that we know of.
Advocacy note: Hope and change?
[:en]What does an Obama administration mean for advocates of human rights in China? As the President and Secretary of State unpack their boxes in their new offices, this has become a favorite subject of debate at China human rights gatherings.
[NEWS] Treatment…and rumors of treatment
[:en]Word has it that China may finally be about to provide second-line treatment to some people with HIV/AIDS.
On a recent trip to China, people with AIDS told AC that roughly one in five of the people they knew living with HIV were at the point where they needed second-line treatment. Duan Jun, an activist from Henan province, said that roughly 40 percent of the people he knew needed second-line. Those numbers are deeply worrying. Just a year ago, we translated a letter from a group of Chinese AIDS activists demanding second-line treatment immediately.
