Word: viruses
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They seem out of place in the world of AIDS. Neither injects drugs. Neither has had any contact with the sex trade. But they represent the newest and most troubling front in China's war against the AIDS virus. As in other countries hit by HIV, the epidemic in China began in the margins of society--among migrant workers, drug users and prostitutes--and then gradually entered the mainstream population. In China this process was facilitated by the government, which, through the tragic mismanagement of its blood-buying program in the early 1990s, permitted blood-collecting practices that ended...
That was how this couple, who declined to give their names, got the AIDS virus. They have kept it a secret from everyone but their immediate family, preferring not to risk being ostracized by their community. "Nobody knows," says the wife quietly. "They would not understand." The husband, as far as they can determine, was the first to get infected, perhaps from blood transfusions during surgery. It wasn't until his wife required an operation in 2001, however, that they were both found to be HIV positive. "I could not believe it," she says. "I told them they were totally...
...part of a treatment program that Ho established in Kunming. There they will get the latest antiretroviral medications and the same careful monitoring that AIDS patients in the U.S. receive, including regular measurements of their viral loads and their immune-cell counts and tests to determine how quickly the virus is mutating to resist the drugs...
...without the data. Clearly, the few programs that the Chinese had put in place--distributing condoms and educating people about the dangers of unprotected sex--were having little effect on the spread of HIV, and most of the population was still both misinformed and uninformed about how dangerous the virus is. "We all appreciate that the epidemic in China was bigger than our expectations," he says. "We found ourselves taking on issues beyond just our research agenda. We realized that with a few more partners, we could--and should--do more educating, treating and training of people about AIDS...
...region. Inside, however, in stark contrast to its tropical-outpost surroundings, are a few jewels of the modern microbiology trade--a state-of-the-art freezer for storing blood samples and an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), a machine for screening HIV that can identify specific antibodies to the virus...