BEIJING, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- It was a work incident that prompted Nan Feng, a former travel agency manager in the sprawling city of Chongqing, to seriously focus on AIDS prevention.
Nan launched a website for gays in 1998. Three years later a local newspaper interviewed him on his AIDS-prevention work.
After the interview was published, Nan's colleagues surreptitiously put the full-page newspaper report about him unfolded on his desk.
"The people around me had the common prejudice that all gays have AIDS," he said.
Nan quit his job with the agency because of the incident and set up a volunteer group to disseminate information on AIDS prevention among high-risk gay groups.
The group's first move was to distribute condoms at gay bars and promote Nan's website on AIDS prevention.
In 2005, the group became eligible for money from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The fund now supports Nan's group on an annual basis, enabling the group to administer HIV tests and provide telephone counselling for gays.8 Nan's group is part of an increasingly influential non-governmental force at the forefront of China's AIDS prevention battle.
China's first AIDS-prevention volunteer group for gay communities was set up in 1997 in Beijing by a group of foreign students. And now, the number of such groups has increased to more than 200, according to Zhang Beichuan, a renowned Chinese AIDS expert.
