Safe sex campaign without protection
- Source: Global Times
- [08:31 August 04 2010]
- Comments
By Craig Curtis
A campaign aimed at promoting safe sex to visitors during the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai is failing to satisfy its target of distributing some 500,000 condoms around the city before the event finishes, bringing into question the commitment of local government authorities when it comes to AIDS preven-tion.
A partnership between the AIDS Prevention Working Committee in Shanghai, the Shanghai Municipal Disease Prevention and Control Center, and the China office of Australian-owned condom brand Jiss-bon, the initiative is in limbo after organizers announced last Tuesday that selected public washrooms and some 150 Expo-designated hotels would receive free condoms for guests.
According to Zhuang Minghua, assistant director for the AIDS Prevention Working Committee in Shanghai, the effort is unlikely to be consummated as the Expo winds down.
"We don't have the condoms yet," he told the Global Times Tuesday. "They were supposed to be sent to the Shanghai Municipal Tourism Bureau for staff to deliver them to budget and star-rated hotels."
He said that he was unsure about the status of the situation, and that of those condoms to be distributed to public bathrooms by the Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau.
Meanwhile, Randy Yu, press officer at Jissbon China, admitted that the 300 condom dispensers that will charge users 1 yuan ($0.15) per item, will not likely be installed in public restrooms until the coming months.
Wrapped in contradiction
Leng Pei'en, of the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, however, denied that the project had been abandoned, saying that it was well underway.
"We have already started distributing condoms and machines," he told the Global Times Tuesday. Leng could not provide further details.
With participant hotels also out of the loop, the move meant to mirror one that saw the dis-tribution of some 100,000 free Jissbon condoms in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, is losing momentum.
Fernanda Doria, director of operations at JW Marriott Hotel, said that her company, an Expo-designated hotel, had not spoken with organizers, nor had it received any condoms.
"We only know about this effort from what has been said by local media," she told the Global Times Tuesday.
Hopes dashed
With 326,000 HIV positive residents and 107,000 HIV carriers in the country as of the last year, according to the Ministry of Health, local AIDS communities are disappointed to see organizers back-pedaling on the initiative.
"The project is extremely important," Zhou Yi, founder of Shanghai-based Beautiful Life, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to AIDS awareness and support for carriers of the disease, told the Global Times Tuesday. "It would be great to see condoms promoted in a more fun way at the Expo, such as the case with the African World Cup this year, where they were used as balloons."
Zhou said that he hoped organizers would see their original goal to the end before too late, and that the project could be expanded in the future to include free condoms at more public places, including subway stations around the city.
Living with AIDS in his thirties, he said that China has improved the situation for people living with AIDS, recently announcing free medical treatment for those affected by the disease, but that the country needs to better educate the public about safe sex, a subject that remains a taboo in China.
"Chinese have a fear of condoms," he said. "They think they're linked to dirty concepts, but they should be more open-minded about using them."
According to UNAIDS, a United Nations group that works with the Chinese government to spread AIDS awareness, less than one in three persons living with HIV in China is diagnosed, while heterosex-ual transmission of the disease has surpassed drug use as the primary source of infection.
UNAIDS further estimates that some 60 percent of female sex workers do not use con-doms with an estimated 37 million male clients in China.
