Su Siying (pseudonym), a senior at a Beijing-based university, got tested for HIV in June after she came down with a rash and her boyfriend at the time had a persisting low fever, state media reports.
She tested positive. "I cannot believe it's true," Su recalled. "I couldn't help deluding myself into thinking it was just a mistake."
While Su's condition is now generally stable with months of antiviral treatment, the virus remains a fear and uncertainty for the 20-year-old, the communist Global Times reports.
"I feel like walking in a swampy jungle, having no idea what lies ahead for me - a firm ground or death," she told the Global Times.
Su is among the growing group of China's HIV-infected college students. Official statistics showed that in 2018, 18.9 percent of China's young HIV patients aged between 15 and 24 years were students, much higher than the 10.4 percent in 2011.
Although China has successfully halted the rapid spread of AIDS on campuses through public policy efforts, the number of young Chinese students infected with HIV remains at a high level of around 3,000 each year, Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), said on November 24, a week ahead of this year's World AIDS Day on Tuesday.
Students, especially college students, who enjoy relatively more sexual freedom than middle schoolers living with parents, are becoming a primary focus on China's HIV prevention and control work, medical experts told the Global Times, saying it is necessary and urgent to carry out AIDS and sex-related education on college campuses, commonly considered a vulnerable places for HIV.
December 1st marks the 33rd World AIDs Day.
Premier Li Keqiang has stressed China will improve the prevention and treatment system of AIDs, and related mechanisms. He also pledged to strengthen scientific research, ensure access to medicine, and continue working tirelessly to prevent and treat AIDs.
Many HIV-infected people, including well-educated college students, face huge pressures of being misunderstood and discriminated in society due to the ignorance and stereotypes about this disease, said some HIV patients and AIDS-related NGOs reached by the Global Times.
Even in more enlightened cities like Shanghai, sporadic cases of HIV-infected university students being isolated and even forced to quit school happen at times, said Bu Jiaqing, founder of Shanghai QingAi Health Center, a local HIV-prevention and patient-assisting NGO.
QingAi occasionally receives calls for help from desperate students who are asked to leave school after being infected with HIV. Bu shared a case in 2016, in which a Shanghai university persuaded a HIV-infected student to self-study at home and promised him a bachelor's degree. "However, he only received an associate degree after graduation," Bu told the Global Times.
The student eventually got his bachelor's degree under the help of QingAi and local media, Bu recalled.
Students looking at AIDs urine test kits in a vending machine at Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, southwestern Sichuan province.
