China’s Guangdong Province To Build Prisons for HIV-Positive Inmates, Officials Say

China's Guangdong provincial government within the next two years plans to build at least two prisons to house its HIV-positive inmates, according to officials in the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Justice, the China Daily reports. The unnamed sources said government agencies are selecting sites for the construction of the prisons but did not provide any further details. Since the province identified its first HIV-positive inmate in 2000, officials have reported about 1,000 HIV cases among prisoners, according to the Provincial Bureau of Justice. Currently, 518 HIV-positive people and 20 people living with AIDS reside in provincial prisons. The proposal for "special" prisons for HIV-positive people was submitted in March by Wang Weiyang, a member of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, in order to "better manag[e]" the spread of the virus in prisons, according to the China Daily (Zheng, China Daily, 11/14). Although "high-profile" campaigns to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic have recently been launched in China, HIV-positive people are often still subject to discrimination, BBC News reports (BBC News, 11/14).