KASHGAR, China -- The story of Almijan, a gaunt 31-year-old former silk trader with nervous eyes, has all the markings of a public health nightmare. A longtime heroin addiction caused him to burn through $60,000 in life savings. Today, he says, all of his drug friends have AIDS and yet continue to share needles and to have sex with a range of women - -- with their wives, with prostitutes, or as he said, "with whoever." For now, Mr. Almijan, whose name like many here is a single word, seems to have escaped the nightmare. His father carted him off to a drug treatment center hundreds of miles away in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region here in China's far west. [continues 953 words]
The poor but scenic Yunnan province is in the forefront of China's battle against AIDS. IT is a quiet morning at the Da Shu Ying Health Centre, an unobtrusive building tucked away in a warren of lower-middle class residential housing in downtown Kunming. The excited chattering of children playing at the adjoining primary school wafts into the clinic's foyer. A few staff outfitted in bright white lab coats swish around with patient files. At around 9.30 a.m. the first patient of the day, Ou, walks in. His hair is combed back neatly and his expression is a little tense. He looks neither to the left nor to the right and heads straight for the medicine counter where he hands the two attendants a prescription. A few seconds later he is given a paper cup, the lime-green contents of which he gulps down gratefully in one swallow. His expression lightens and he exhales heavily in relief as he sits down on a nearby bench. [continues 2138 words]
CHINA has become the most important trafficking route for illegal drugs in the Asia-Pacific region and may have as many as 12 million drug addicts. A report commissioned by the Australian National Council on Drugs, to be made public in Sydney tomorrow, says Burma is the region's main producer of opium, heroin and amphetamine-type drugs, and that most heroin produced there is now trafficked through China, rather than through Thailand, as previously. The Burma-China route has been joined by new routes from Afghanistan - - the world's biggest opium producer - into western China, particularly through the Xinjiang autonomous region. [continues 352 words]
PUBLIC health authorities in south China's Guangdong Province said they will open 30 more methadone replacement clinics over the next few months. Huang Fei, deputy director of Guangdong Provincial Health Bureau, said procedures for construction of 27 of the planned new methadone clinics had been assessed by a provincial-level expert panel and are now awaiting approval by the State. The new methadone clinics will be built in at least 16 cities, including three in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, according to the official. [continues 119 words]
Changsha, China -- They line up here every day, at the new Tianxin district storefront clinic, and wait patiently for their methadone. Among them, a man who identifies himself as Wang swirls a clear plastic cup of lime-green liquid, brings it to his lips and swallows. At the site of this pilot project in HIV prevention, Wang could blend in with any of the shop owners and businessmen in this busy commercial neighborhood of Hunan province's capital city. He has been coming to the clinic every afternoon, since shortly after it opened in February, hoping that methadone will break his addiction to heroin, keep him out of trouble with the law and ultimately protect him from AIDS. [continues 2012 words]
While International Anti-Drug Day last week was marked in the West by much hand-wringing over the evils of addictive chemical substances, the Chinese authorities addressed the day in far more robust fashion. Several drug dealers were taken out to execution grounds and shot. Just how many convicted drugs traffickers and producers got a bullet in the back of the head in honour of the day is difficult to say. The government-controlled China Daily online newspaper contains reports indicating there were executions in several provinces, but it is impossible to know if these reports tell the full story. One article said in Shanghai 1,300 people were invited to a university sports stadium to witness the conclusion of the trial of three drug traffickers who "were taken to an undisclosed location in the suburbs to be shot immediately after they were sentenced." [end]
KUNMING, China This scenic capital of China's southern Yunnan Province has earned itself a more unsavory sobriquet - China's AIDS capital. Historically, this multi-ethnic region of stunning valleys and gorges, including a site locals say is the fabled region of Shangri-La, stood out in mostly Han China for its uniquely diverse culture and beauty. Now the province, where China's first HIV cases were discovered in the early 1990s, is home to about 30,000 of the 140,000 Chinese who are HIV- positive, according to official reports. And that is almost certainly an underestimate, said Yang Maobin, director of Daytop, an HIV/AIDS care center in Kunming. Experts say that in reality there could be as many as 200,000 HIV cases in Yunnan and 300,000 more in the neighboring autonomous regions of Guangxi and western Xinjiang. [continues 944 words]
KUNMING, China -- This scenic capital of China's southern Yunnan Province has earned itself a more unsavory sobriquet -- China's AIDS capital. Historically, this multi-ethnic region of stunning valleys and gorges, including a site locals say is the fabled region of Shangri-La, stood out in mostly Han China for its uniquely diverse culture and beauty. Now the province, where China's first HIV cases were discovered in the early 1990s, is home to about 30,000 of the 140,000 Chinese who are HIV-positive, according to official reports. And that's almost certainly an underestimate, said Yang Maobin, director of Daytop, a HIV/AIDS care center in Kunming. [continues 1010 words]
BEIJING - Chinese and U.S. agents seized more than 300 pounds of cocaine smuggled from Colombia, authorities said Tuesday - a record bust for China that underscores how South American narcotics gangs are aggressively moving into Asia. Nine people were arrested. Chinese television footage showed a locker stacked high with dozens of bricks of smuggled cocaine, some with a yin yang symbol embossed on the solid white blocks. The suspects include two Colombian citizens arrested in Hong Kong and mainland China, said Liu Guangping, spokesman for the Customs General Administration of China. [continues 213 words]
HONG KONG: A sentencing hearing is due to begin tomorrow for three Australians, including two teenagers, charged with smuggling heroin in Hong Kong. The defendants, in custody since April 12 when they were arrested in a hotel room, have pleaded guilty to being smugglers, or "drug mules," who intended to carry heroin from Hong Kong to Sydney. The trio face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a fine of $A900,000, prosecutor Derek Lai said. The accused - all from Sydney - included Hutchinson Tran, an unemployed 21-year-old, and Rachel Ann Diaz, a 17-year-old hairstylist. The third defendant could not be identified because of his age. He was 15 at the time of the offence. The three were arrested in a hotel room with 701g of heroin. [end]
RUILI, China -- This ancient road has had many names: Old tea-horse trail. The Burma Road. Route 320. But the label that matters most today is one that appears on no sign at all: the AIDS road. Past truck-stop brothels and through disease-ravaged cities and villages in China's far southwest Yunnan province, this two-lane road carves the path of an HIV epidemic that is growing faster than international health officials previously thought. This is the main road through the epicenter of AIDS in the world's most populous country, where a new national study shows that 200 people are being infected every day. It is a central artery through which sex, drugs and trade are spreading the virus into previously untouched swaths of the population, researchers say. [continues 1735 words]
BEIJING -- China has resumed controversial brain surgery intended to cure drug users of their addiction, less than two years after it was suspended. It claims that the "hole in the head" operations are now being performed as part of a controlled experiment. More than 500 of the operations, in which parts of a patient's brain are destroyed using a heated needle, were performed across China between 2000 and the end of last year -- when the health ministry, faced with growing criticism, said their outcome was too uncertain for them to continue. [continues 319 words]
China has resumed controversial brain surgery intended to cure drug users of their addiction, just a year after it was suspended. It claims that the "hole in the head" operations are now being performed as part of a controlled experiment. More than 500 of the operations, in which parts of a patient's brain are destroyed using a heated needle, were performed across China between 2000 and the end of last year - when the health ministry, faced with growing criticism, said their outcome was too uncertain for them to continue. [continues 705 words]
SHANGHAI, China - China is stepping up work on laws to counter money-laundering and financing of terrorist operations, state newspapers reported Friday, citing a senior central bank official. A draft of an anti-money-laundering law will be submitted to China's national legislature at the "appropriate time," Xiang Junbo, a vice governor of the People's Bank of China, told a conference in Beijing. An anti-terrorism law that includes sections on money laundering has also been drawn up, Xiang said. [continues 334 words]
A "people's war" on narcotics in China has turned into a campaign against designer drugs after police found a surge in usage of ecstasy, ketamine and methamphetamine, or ice, among urban professionals. In a shift that may be down to a booming economy and the growing influence of globalised culture, Chinese authorities said this week the focus of their anti-drugs campaigns has widened from disadvantaged social groups - such as minorities, prostitutes and the unemployed - to affluent white-collar workers. [continues 339 words]
KUALA LUMPUR: Thirty-eight Malaysians, including three who are on death row for drug trafficking, are being held in several prisons and detention centres in China. Sources said two of the Malaysians sentenced to death were arrested in November 1999 while the other was arrested in December 2000. They said all three were sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle 'ice' (syabu) into China, which has tough laws on drug trafficking. The sources said the Chinese authorities have identified South-East Asians as being actively involved in the trafficking of drugs into the mainland. [continues 148 words]
TOKYO - The HIV/AIDS epidemic in China appears to be spreading along drug trafficking routes extending from Yunnan Province, a trading center connecting China to Southeast Asia, researchers said Monday at National Institute of Infectious Disease's International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. The team headed by Yutaka Takebe from the institute's AIDS Research Center investigated the strains of HIV in patients in Yunnan and estimated their relationship with strains in India and other neighboring counties. The researchers discovered two strains of HIV - one found in Thailand in 1988 and another that was hybrid of strains found in India and Thailand. They also found two new subtypes, both derived from the Indian-Thai hybrid, in Xinjiang Uighur and Guang Xizhuan regions. The researchers believe the strains have traveled from one of the world's largest heroin producing regions, the Golden Triangle, in areas of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. [end]
With young people making up 70 per cent of China's drug users, to curb the spread of drugs among China's youth has become an urgent task in the country's wider war on drugs. At the Seventh Forum on Juvenile Drug and AIDS Prevention Education held on Friday in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, experts and educators alike urged the government to step up anti-drug education among the young. According to statistics provided by the National Narcotics Control Commission, China is now home to 791,000 drug users, a growth of 6.8 per cent over last year. [continues 332 words]
The number of drug users in China is on the rise. According to the Beijing Daily Messenger, there are 791 thousand drug users in China, a seven per cent increase compared with 2003. Most of them are under 35. The paper says that Chinese government is going to step up the fight against drugs. The plan is for tougher laws, encouraging people to report suspected drug users, setting up supervision and evaluation systems and promoting international anti-drug cooperation. [end]
Nearly 10,000 Beijing residents braved the pouring rain and walked 12 kilometres to highlight the danger of drugs. Yesterday's participants came from all walks of life, although most were college students, to mark International Anti-Drugs Day. According to statistics from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, nearly 3,000 drug addicts in Beijing were sent to mandatory drug rehabilitation centres last year. A further 9,000 addicts went to rehab centres voluntarily. Statistics from the Ministry of Public Security indicate the number of registered drug addicts in China reached more than 790,000 by the end of last year. More than 2,200 of the 2,863 counties were found to have drug users. [continues 441 words]
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