(29 Sep 1999) Mandarin/Nat
On Friday, China will hold an elaborate anniversary celebration commemorating the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
The nation's reform policies of the last two decades have brought impressive accomplishments but also vexing new problems.
An explosion in drug use and rampant prostitution have resulted in a rapid increase of H-I-V infections in the population.
Those suffering from this fatal affliction find themselves victims twice over - both of the disease, and of a society and medical establishment unprepared to deal with them.
Song Pengfei (\"Peng-fay\") is lucky to be alive.
A small hospital near his home village turned a routine operation into near-disaster - his life was only saved by a last minute transfusion of more than a litre of blood.
But the life-saving blood brought him a new crisis - it infected him with the virus that causes A-I-D-S, which depletes the human immune system.
For seventeen-year-old Pengfei and his family, that infection in early 1998 has brought them up against a Chinese society and health system not ready to deal with what - for them - is a desperate new problem.
To make matters worse, the state-run hospital has refused to pay for his long-term treatment and stopped the supply of anti-H-I-V medicine to the family.
Frightened neighbours in their village pelted their house with stones before hounding the family out of their town of Linfen in China's northwestern Shaanxi province.
They now live in a temporarily-rented apartment in Beijing where they continue to argue their case with the government.
Pengfei says he still can't understand why their pleas have met with such opposition.
SOUNDBITE: (Mandarin)
\"Because I didn't do anything wrong. It was them who, you could say, taught me this lesson. And you could say I have taught them a lesson. But the mistakes were not mine. So why should we be attacked
like this?\"
SUPER CAPTION: Song Pengfei, 17-year-old AIDS victim
Pengfei's plight is a window into China's struggle with A-I-D-S.
There are an estimated 400-thousand people infected with H-I-V in China, but they have little money to treat them.
About two-thirds of Chinese infected with H-I-V are drug addicts from rural areas - but the number of sexually transmitted cases is on the rise.
The number of those infected by transfusions or by selling blood at unhygienic private collection stations is unknown.
The scarcity of blood supply has encouraged a long-standing black market in blood through unscrupulous dealers.
Many of the paid donors are poor rural migrants and those at the margins of society.
To clean up its blood supply, China introduced a law last year outlawing the sale of blood.
Days off work and other inducements are being used to encourage people to donate at centres like this one.
But recent raids at known suppliers reported by the Chinese media have shown that illegal blood selling is still widespread.
International health workers credit the Chinese government for reacting quickly to the spread of A-I-D-S, but public ignorance about A-I-D-S and its sufferers remain widespread.
Most patients don't receive drugs that deal directly with the infection and instead are only treated for its symptoms.
Song Pengfei's family can't understand why the medicine supply to help their son was terminated, denying him the basic right to live.
Pengfei's father says he wants nothing more than what Chinese President Jiang Zemin himself has promised in recent speeches.
SOUNDBITE: (Mandarin)
SUPER CAPTION: Song Xishan, father
SOUNDBITE: (Mandarin)
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