Aids patients march through Beijing
New leadership gives fresh hope to sufferers as they petition government to listen to their pleas
More than 100 HIV/Aids patients from Henan, where future premier Li Keqiang held senior government or Communist Party posts for six years, took to the streets of Beijing yesterday, calling on the party's new leadership to meet their demands for more attention and better care.
With red ribbons pinned to their overcoats to mark tomorrow's World Aids Day, they sang the national anthem as they marched down the city centre's Wangfujing Road and then on towards the Ministry of Civil Affairs, watched by police all the way.
The petitioners have tried to have their appeals heard by various government agencies for years without success, but their hope has been renewed by the party's leadership transition and recent remarks by Li. He has been hailed by the mainland media for showing concern and reaching out to the HIV/Aids community after an HIV patient in Tianjin was denied medical care.
Guo Jianshe, 53, an Aids patient from Anyang , Henan, said: "We want the government to listen to our appeals and give us hope to live on. We want the government to give us subsidies to compensate for the tragedy in the 1990s."
Guo and his wife sold blood in the 1990s because they were impoverished and contracted Aids through contamination at a blood donation station. His wife died three years ago, leaving him and two children behind.
"With HIV I lost the ability to work and I have no other income but the subsidy for a low-income family - a meagre 117 yuan (HK$144) a month. That's far from enough, even for us farmers," Guo said.