China
The UNICEF Response
Link to the national epidemic
link to the national response

During the 1990s, UNICEF HIV/AIDS cooperation in China focussed on the badly affected southern province of Yunnan, bordering Myanmar, Lao PDR and Viet Nam. Building on the significant progress made in Yunnan, the overall strategy is now to strengthen responses in five new provinces, while maintaining advocacy at the central level.

Supporting New Provinces

UNICEF is currently targetting the provinces of Jilin, Ningxia, Zhongqing, Guizhou and Henan. The focus of work in new provinces is capacity building and assistance to make provincial planning more holistic and to support low-cost prevention and care models. Behavioural surveillance capacity will also be progressively established in the provinces to inform both design and monitoring of the impact of interventions, as well as growing vulnerability and risk behaviour.

Meanwhile, UNICEF remains active in a number of activities in Yunnan – notably Buddhist leadership, care and support programming, and collaboration with UNICEF Country Programs along the 4,000-km border Yunnan shares with Viet Nam, Lao PDR and Myanmar, and neighbouring Thailand, – and in Sichuan province (school-based prevention and care).

A lifeskills and HIV/AIDS prevention workshop in a Yunnan school

To help institutionalize the response in Yunnan, UNICEF has supported orientation workshops for government officials, including:

  • Officials training at the prefectural and provincial Communist Party schools,
  • Staff of the military hospital in Kaiyuan city,
  • Local leaders in project counties and villages, and
  • Staff of the family planning system, as part of a strategy to see integration of HIV/AIDS/STI prevention and control within the strong nationwide family planning system.

Boosting Youth Participation

The years 1999 and 2000 saw Yunnan hosting two major youth forums on HIV/AIDS prevention, demonstrating the value China places on the contributions of young people in the HIV/AIDS response. The forums gave youth peer educators the chance to share their ideas and experiences, recharge and look ahead.

Filming With Hope and Help: China

In August 1999, peer educators from around China met in Kunming for the UNICEF/Yunnan Red Cross-organized Youth Forum on HIV/AIDS Prevention. The forum gathered young people from nine Chinese provinces, including Beijing, Shanghai, Hainan and Yunnan, along with representatives of the National AIDS Centre, the China Family Planning Association, China Red Cross, the Australia/China Joint Safer Sex and HIV/AIDS Prevention Project, Yunnan/Australia Peer Education Project, the Yunnan provincial government and others. Youth facilitators and peer educators arranged all of the logistics and activities, including a visit to the Kunming Drug Rehabilitation Centre, where the participants joined in activities with groups based at the centre. Media coverage of the forum included articles in five newspapers and reports on three TV channels.

UNICEF joined AusAID in funding the Mekong Children's Forum for Students in Border Areas, held in Kunming in November 2000, provided similar sharing and learning opportunities, this time for peer educators from Thailand, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Viet Nam and Cambodia as well as China. Each country team consisted of six middle-school peer educators from border areas, teachers, resource persons and leaders from national education departments.

Education for Prevention

UNICEF supports a range of behaviour development and change activities targetting groups with high risk behaviours in China. These activities include:

  • HIV/AIDS prevention workshops for long-distance truck drivers and automobile mechanics, organized by the local AIDS offices, communication bureaus and public security bureaus of Lancang county (Simao prefecture) and Kaiyuan City (Honghe prefecture);
  • HIV/AIDS and harm-reduction training for injecting drug users and staff in several drug rehabilitation centres.
  • Since 1998, UNICEF has supported training workshops for service women and managers in entertainment venues in Yunnan, focussing on condom use and the social and family impacts of HIV/AIDS. Workshops and follow-up meetings have been held by local and provincial AIDS offices in Dehong, Simao and Honghe prefectures. The AIDS offices have also distributed safe sex leaflets and video messages to play on in-house AV channels, designed for male clients.
  • UNICEF is collaborating with the Australian Red Cross Yunnan and the Yunnan Women's Federation on developing a pilot Lifeskills/peer education program for this same target group which will put more emphasis on interactivity and skills for behaviour change.
Yunnanese monks brainstorm during a workshop on HIV/AIDS prevention and care

Women Peer Educators

The Yunnan Women's Federation has already proved itself a key actor in bringing HIV/AIDS knowledge to rural women. As part of an on-going project, 2,380 women cadres, village doctors, family planning staff and local leaders received training on HIV/AIDS prevention education from the Federation in 2000. Each of them will go on to train 50-100 village women on HIV/AIDS knowledge and prevention. To help the Women's Federation train more women communicators and expand coverage of the project, UNICEF is supporting the development of a basic training manual in Mandarin Chinese and the main local languages in Yunnan. The manual is being developed through the Yunnan Regional Child Development Centre.

A New Partnership in Family Planning

Following up on a recent change in national family planning policy, UNICEF and the Yunnan Provincial AIDS Office are advocating with the Yunnan Family Planning Commission to integrate HIV/AIDS prevention knowledge into routine community-level family planning services. The initiative will include, among other activities, development of a training manual on integrating HIV/AIDS/STI prevention education into family planning and ensuring that condoms are available in villages for family planning and disease prevention.

Buddhist Monks ... Plus

The role of Buddhist monks in HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support in Yunnan continues to grow. In March 2000, monks from Thailand's Sangha Metta project visited Wat Paje, the central Buddhist temple in Xi Shuang Ban Na, to help train Dai monks from around southern Yunnan in using a Lifeskills approach to teach children and community members about HIV/AIDS. The workshops included a three-day teaching demonstration with novice monks at Wat Paje.

Encouraged by the Abbot of Wat Paje – the most senior monk in Xi Shuang Ban Na – monks in the prefecture have become actively involved in HIV/AIDS education, prevention and care, incorporating HIV/AIDS messages in their sermons, giving HIV/AIDS education to Dai children attending language and culture classes at their temples, and providing spiritual and material support to people with HIV/AIDS. Some monks have visited remote, inaccessible communities to conduct special trainings. Monks have also produced HIV/AIDS education materials in the Dai language.

The year 2000 also saw UNICEF supporting training workshops for Buddhist monks in Zhongdian, Diqing Prefecture, and for Christians in Lancang, Simao Prefecture.

With Hope and Help: China

The With Hope and Help film for China has been broadcast over provincial and county TV stations in Yunnan. Translated and adapted manuals will be used intensively with the video to promote community acceptance and support. In selected communities where the conditions seem to be right, With Hope and Help will also be used to mobilize people with HIV/AIDS.

Border Cooperation

Hekou County is Yunnan's main border crossing with Viet Nam (Lao Cai province). With UNICEF help, staff in public security, health, immigration, quarantine, Women's Federation, culture and foreign affairs departments received HIV/AIDS orientation and training in 2000 from the county government. The object is to improve cooperation between the sectors and strengthen prevention responses for cross-border migrants.

The county government also organized several HIV/AIDS/STI prevention workshops for Vietnamese migrant girls working in Hekou, and conducted a baseline survey of knowledge and risk behaviours among this group.