Campus screening of HIV film aims to curb discrimination

China's first charity movie featuring HIV-affected children began pilot screenings in universities nationwide, the latest move to curb discrimination against AIDS/HIV carriers in the country.

The movie, Ai Ni De Ren (The One Who Loves You), was released Tuesday for test screenings in Guangxi University, in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Over 300 students and teachers attended the screening.

Guangxi University was the first stop on the movie's test screen tour, Deng Xingguang, the movie's executive producer, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The movie was produced under the guidance of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS and the AIDS Prevention Office under the State Council. 

It features a university student named Du Juan who devotes herself to taking care of HIV-affected children in a rural school after she was raped and possibly infected with HIV. The heroine in the movie is forced to quit university due to discrimination from relatives and friends.

"The movie will also be test-screened in some universities in Guangdong and Guizhou provinces. And we may screen it in more universities in the future," Deng said, adding that the movie is expected to screen in cinemas nationwide this summer. A percentage of the box office receipts will be donated to AIDS orphans.

"We screened the film on campus because HIV/AIDS infection rates in students have increased in recent years," Deng said, adding that the response so far has been positive. 

Beijing identified a total of 2,932 new carriers of HIV/AIDS from January to October in 2014, up 21 percent from the same period in 2013. More than 100 of those infected were students, according to statistics from the Beijing health authority in November 2014.

The number of people aged between 15 and 24 infected with HIV/AIDS almost doubled from 2008 to 2012, with homosexual sex the most common cause, the Xinhua News Agency reported in 2014.

More recently, authorities have reported that the rates of infection in older people who are infected through heterosexual sex are climbing. The results of an HIV/AIDS survey in Yunnan Province in 2014 showed that the percentage of HIV/AIDS carriers aged 50 or above had soared from 4.4 percent in 2004 to 24.9 percent in 2014. The data was attributed to an increase in extramarital affairs or sex with prostitutes.

Xiaoqiang (pseudonym), a volunteer from Sharing Air in Love, a Chengdu-based NGO for HIV/AIDS carriers in Sichuan Province, hailed the film, saying that campus education of anti-discrimination toward the virus is crucial to raising public awareness of the issue.

"Students, especially university students, will usually to learn and change their prejudices. Moreover, in the long term, they can also spread these concepts to the next generation and eventually change society's attitude toward these carriers," he told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

A regulation in 2006 banned discrimination in education and employment in China for those with HIV/AIDS.

Many celebrities have also become involved in the anti-discrimination campaign, including China's first lady Peng Liyuan, who attended a South China campus event promoting the prevention of AIDS and tuberculosis in March 2015.

The move came as discrimination cases were reported nationwide.

In a recent case, an 8-year-old boy, named Kunkun, allegedly faced expulsion from Shufangya village, Sichuan Province in December 2014 for being HIV-positive. More than 200 villagers, including the boy's grandfather, voted to expel the boy in an effort to "protect villagers' health." The child now attends a special school in Shanxi Province.

Zhang Beichuan, a professor affiliated with the hospital of Qingdao University Medical College, said that the enduring discrimination is mainly caused by poor education.

"Now, the education focuses mainly on how to prevent the virus, which is not enough. Knowledge about the development of medical treatment and anti-discrimination about sexual orientation should be emphasized to reduce people's fear of the virus," Zhang told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The government should embed knowledge about HIV/AIDS in public health education by requiring schools to introduce regular lessons, he said

Xiaoqiang, who is an HIV carrier, echoed Zhang, saying that many university students have set up volunteer groups to conduct work to fight discrimination toward HIV/AIDS carriers, which relied on handing out leaflets.

"Universities should invite more carriers to communicate with students and other residents. In this way, people will know carriers are no different to them," he added.