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Cash-strapped HIV counselor calls it a day

By Lin Shujuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-01 08:04

For 27-year-old Wang Jun, the past 14 months of his life have been anything but ordinary.

He also knows better than most that the following months or years will not be any easier.

From a happy, well-to-do logistician in Gansu province, Wang became, in his own words, "a walking, talking dead body" overnight in August 2008.

That is when he tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and had to leave his job to come to Beijing for treatment.

"I was psychologically dead," Wang says, remembering the first day he entered a Beijing hospital "all bony and weak", like it was yesterday.

His CD4 - the indicator of a human's immunity - had touched as low as 18, compared with more than 800 as that of a healthy person.

But then Wang, who realized he was homosexual at the age of 16, did not know the power of counseling.

In the next four months at the You'an Hospital, one of the two main hospitals in Beijing dedicated to treating HIV/AIDS, Wang's CD4 increased to nearly 300 and he gained 10 kg.

"There's no other way of saying it - I was reborn here," he says.

It would not have been possible without a man called Bai Zhixue, a doctor-turned-psychological counselor for HIV/AIDS patients, who co-founded "Quiet Garden", a non-profit organization that aims to give people living with the still incurable virus hope.

Bai, who tested HIV positive in 2006, and other volunteers at Quiet Garden, inspired Wang to join their cause. Today, 10 months after becoming a full-time counselor, providing any help he could to "at least 10 new carriers of the virus" that turned up at his door every day, Wang must bid farewell to his colleagues.

The 1,500 yuan a month ($220) he gets for being a volunteer is "simply not enough to survive in Beijing".

"I don't expect to live luxuriously. I would continue counseling even if I got 3,000 yuan a month. That would be decent to survive in China's capital," Wang says.

Bai says he understands, adding that he would have quit long ago had it not been for the kindness of the hospital, where he once worked, that continued to pay him his salary after he tested positive for the virus.

"We've often heard that the government is spending a lot of money to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. But then why is it so difficult to keep a person who has dedicated his life, no matter how short, to helping those who suffer more from the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS than the disease itself?" Bai asks.

China now has 276 AIDS control programs jointly operating with more than 40 foreign governments or international organizations, involving 3.58 billion yuan in funds, China's Vice-Premier Li Keqiang said last week.

Bai says he will do all he can to get Wang's monthly stipend up to 3,000 yuan.

As for Wang, he is currently working on a plan to open a restaurant in Beijing with the help of HIV-positive friends he has made over the past 14 months.

"When God closes a door, he somewhere opens a window," Wang says.

(China Daily 12/01/2009 page5)