Beijing: Beijing opened its first clinic for gays which will provide free check-up for Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) and AIDS for a year.
The clinic, with financial support from local health authorities, will provide one-year of free check-ups for AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea and genital herpes.
Free treatment is available for each of these diseases except AIDS, chief of Chaoyang Chinese AIDS Volunteer Group, Xiao Dong said.
The clinic was set up on Thursday by Chaoyang Chinese AIDS Volunteer Group, a non-governmental AIDS prevention organisation, and the Disease Prevention and Control Center of Chaoyang District of Beijing.
People confirmed to be HIV carriers will be directed to national free treatment programmes and will be given free regular examinations, Xiao said.
Examinees will be treated anonymously and theirprivacy will be respected. The clinic, located in the disease prevention and control centre, will spread to two or three community hospitals soon in order to provide more convenient and confidential services.
China's free AIDS treatments covers 25,000 patients in 623 counties in 31 provinces. The country has spent nearly $36 million on free anti-AIDS treatment in the last three years, accounting for 14.3 per cent of total anti-AIDS outlay, according to the health ministry.
South China's Shenzhen city and East China's Nanjing city set up homosexual clinics in February 2004.
China's first and most recent official figure on male homosexuality was released in 2004, putting the total number of gay men in the country at between five and 10 million.
The HIV infection rate is close to 1.5 per cent among sexually active homosexual men, a professor with Qingdao University's Medical School, Zhang Beichuan said.
Comments
0 comment