Prisoners in the Qingpu Prison in Shanghai receive medical consult on "AIDS & Drugs" in the picture taken on June 24, 2005. [newsphoto]

BEIJING, Aug. 15 -- Prisoners in Beijing will receive compulsory HIV/AIDS tests, with confirmed sufferers of the disease getting free medical treatment. The treatment will continue after the prisoners finish their jail terms.

    The aim is to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among prisoners and to provide treatment as part of the capital's efforts to combat the disease, said an official with the Beijing Prison Management Bureau yesterday.

    Ray Yip, director of the Beijing office of Global AIDS Program of the United States, described the move by the Beijing prison authorities as a "sensible and effective measure" which would help identify HIV/AIDS sufferers in jail as early as possible, thus cutting down the potential for spreading the disease.

    According to Yip, timely treatment for every HIV/AIDS sufferer can help prevent the infection spreading to between three and five others.

    Prisoners are a high-risk group, with an infection rate of three per thousand, which is more than four times higher than in the population at large, he noted.

    Statistics indicate that the total number of registered HIV/AIDS sufferers in Beijing is less than 2,000, said Li Dun, a professor with Tsinghua University.

    From last November to March this year, justice and health departments launched a nationwide HIV/AIDS test among prisoners and juvenile delinquents being re-educated through labour. No data has been released about the programme.

    According to the official at the prison management bureau, all HIV/AIDS prisoners in Beijing will be put in the city's Jinzhong Prison, where an attached hospital can provide medical treatment.

    According to Yip, in most state prisons in the United States, prisoners, whether HIV/AIDS infected or not, are jailed in the same prison after accepting tests.

    "Such a system has resulted in very few people getting AIDS in prisons."

    A high proportion of AIDS sufferers are drug addicts, and Chinese law requires that they should be cured of their addiction as soon as it is discovered. Those found to be taking drugs after this will be sentenced to three years re-education through labour.

(Source: China Daily)