Compiled and edited by Martin Flynn
Chinese authorities have released Wan Yanhai, the award-winning Aids activist, after detaining him in secret for a month. Wan's detention sparked angry protests around the world. The state-run New China News Agency said that Wan was released after apologising for leaking state secrets about a scandal in Henan where the government is alleged to have encouraged farmers to sell their blood for cash. Crude methods of blood collection and the re-use of needles caused hundreds of thousands of people in the province to become infected with HIV. UN estimates put
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the number of HIV infections at one million in rural Henan alone, though the Beijing government puts the figure at only 850,000 for the whole nation.
Transgenders battle for health rights
After more than 20 years on the sidelines of the Aids
epidemic, US transgender activists came together last month to step up
the campaign for better health rights.
The meeting, at the US Conference on Aids in Anaheim, California, highlighted
the special health needs of women who were formerly men. They are rarely
targeted by HIV prevention programmes. The US federal government considers
transgender people to be no different from gay men. Even the liberal stronghold
of San Francisco only began a sexual health programme for transgenders
in 1999.
"Transgenders are still not part of the picture," said Brenda
Thomas, a male-to-female transgender who has HIV. "There are no funds
to target transgenders. We don't know how big or small the numbers are.
It's a population that doesn't exist."
No one knows how many transgenders are infected with HIV, although a San
Francisco study in 2000 found that 15 per cent of those tested were HIV
positive. Women who were formerly men are at the highest risk of getting
Aids for a variety of reasons, Thomas said.
The passenger, who is in the final stages of the disease, wished to spend her last days with her family in Thailand but did not provide the airline with with "the necessary
