Mujurlah kerajaan kita telah memulakan program seperti methadone dan pertukaran jarum untuk mengatasi masalah Aids dsb. Mujur jugak negara kita ada saintis yang sanggup berkongsi idea dan mujurlah pemimpin kita dapat sepandangan dengan saintis kita. Kalau tak rugi lah kita. Negra China pun sedang giat menjalankan program yang sama. Dan saya berharap ADK dapat meneruskan peperangan ini dengan kaedah yang lebih efektif dan bukan setakat kaunseling yang terbukti gagal dan tak berguna. Untuk kongsi: jangan kita gagal lagi sebab keangguhan diri terutama pemimpin kita. Setiap kebaikan yang anda buat sungguh bermkana untuk insan kawan penangguh dadah kita.. Malaysia boleh

CHINA URGES NEEDLE EXCHANGES TO FIGHT AIDS
by: Christopher Bodeen, The Associated Press

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - In an aggressive new anti-AIDS push, China's Health Ministry is urging the promotion of free condoms and needle exchanges -- strategies previously considered taboo by the conservative communist government.

The proposed guidelines urge local governments to tailor those measures to high-risk groups in one of the boldest nationwide campaigns yet against the disease.

The most striking proposal calls for combining methadone treatment with needle exchanges to promote safe behavior among drug users -- a group almost completely ignored in the past.

"Under the national health system's launching of a people's war against drugs, drug eradication, AIDS prevention, and daily tasks must be closely joined," said a copy of the guidelines posted on the Health Ministry's Web site.

China says it has 840,000 people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 80,000 have the full-blown disease. But health experts say the true figures are much higher and warn that China could have 10 million infected by 2010 unless stronger measures are taken.

The government only recently became open about its AIDS epidemic after years of denying it was a problem, although independent activists are still frequently detained and harassed.

China launched a new national anti-drug campaign last month. Its aggressive new approach on AIDS was praised Tuesday by Randall Tobias, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator.

"I'm very encouraged by the commitment that the senior leadership of the government has made," Tobias said at a news conference in Beijing.

He warned, however, of massive challenges in the countryside, where AIDS has often spread through unsanitary blood-buying schemes.

"It will be a very long journey," Tobias said.

Washington is providing China with $35 million for AIDS from 2004-08.

At the news conference, Tobias and actor and anti-AIDS spokesman Pu Cunxin rolled up their sleeves and took a blood test to demonstrate its safety.

Most AIDS victims are thought to have become infected through sharing needles during intravenous drug use. Widespread prostitution is also a chief cause of infection, one that experts warn could spread the virus into the wider population.

The guidelines say prostitutes should be encouraged to require customers to use condoms, seek reproductive health services, and be treated for venereal disease. People infected with sexually transmitted diseases are to be given free condoms, they say.

They also call for disease prevention education to be carried out at places where gay men gather, as well as at job sites and other areas where migrant workers live.