Prisoners in the capital will receive compulsory
HIV tests, with those confirmed positive getting access to free
medical treatment, according to Beijing Prison Management Bureau
yesterday, though no dates for the testing program were
specified.
The aim is to prevent further spread of HIV among
prisoners, a bureau official said, and free treatment will continue
after they finish their jail terms.
Ray Yip, director of the US Global AIDS Program's
Beijing
office, described the move as a "sensible and effective measure"
that would help identify prisoners with HIV/AIDS as early as
possible, thus cutting down the potential for the spread of HIV in
jails.
Testing prison populations was identified as a
national priority by health authorities at the end of last year,
and tests conducted in east China's Shandong
Province amongst inmates of correctional facilities found 21 people
to be HIV positive, provincial authorities said on July 26.
Besides Yunnan
and Zhejiang,
other provinces have rarely tested people in prisons, detention
centers, labor camps or police detention. But between November and
March, justice and health departments conducted nationwide testing
of people in reeducation through labor camps, though no results
have yet been released.
Yip said timely treatment of people with HIV can
help prevent the virus being passed on to three to five others, and
that prisoners' infection rate of three per thousand was more than
four times that of the general population.
According to the prison management bureau, all
Beijing prisoners with HIV/AIDS will be housed in Jinzhong Prison,
where an attached hospital can provide medical treatment.
Yip said that in most US state prisons, prisoners
are jailed in the same prison after accepting tests, whether HIV
positive or not, and that "such a system has resulted in very few
people acquiring HIV in prisons."
A high proportion of people with HIV are drug
users, and Chinese law requires that their drug dependence be
treated as soon as it is discovered. Those found using drugs after
this are sentenced to three years' reeducation through labor.
(China Daily August 15, 2005)