What is the weakest, but most important link in China's chain of HIV/AIDS prevention and control?

According to many, the answer is the lack of awareness amongst officials at various levels.

Mao Qun'an, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Health, was interviewed yesterday by China Daily about a three-year initiative at the Party School of the Communist Party of China.

As the top training center for almost all the party's middle and high-ranking officials, the school is ideally placed to increase HIV/AIDS awareness amongst the country's key post-holders, said Mao. "The reason is very simple: it is these officials who put the central government's political commitment on HIV/AIDS control into practice."

Lectures on HIV/AIDS have become an extracurricular training course, paid increasing attention to by students, and have served to change attitudes towards the disease.

The issue has been discussed as one topic of public health taught by Zhang Wenkang, former Chinese health minister, since 2001, Mao added.

However, for a long time, students have thought such lectures out of place, said Jin Wei, a professor at the school who masterminded the school’s first HIV/AIDS policy education program three years ago.

To them, such matters should be the business of health departments and have little to do with them, Jin said, whilst their levels of basic knowledge were extremely poor.

According to a poll taken in the school in 2001, about 23 percent of the 400 respondents had no idea about the long and medium term program for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control (1998-2010), a document approved by the State Council in 1998.

The poll also revealed that around 36 percent believed mosquitoes could transmit the virus, and almost 34 percent thought it could be transmitted through sharing public toilets.

Public and official awareness has been increased in recent years, especially following visits by Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao to people with AIDS in 2003 and 2004 respectively, said Mao.

However, the visits are not enough if there are no follow-up measures to strengthen the education of present and future officials, said Ray Yip, director of the Beijing office of the US' Global AIDS Program.

"The education of party officials now makes me believe that the party has sincerely taken responsibility for HIV/AIDS control, and do not see it as only an affair of the government," Yip said.

(China Daily December 15, 2004)