Prisoners in the capital will receive compulsory HIV tests, with those confirmed positive getting access to free medical treatment, according to Beijing Prison Management Bureau yesterday, though no dates for the testing program were specified.

The aim is to prevent further spread of HIV among prisoners, a bureau official said, and free treatment will continue after they finish their jail terms.

Ray Yip, director of the US Global AIDS Program's Beijing office, described the move as a "sensible and effective measure" that would help identify prisoners with HIV/AIDS as early as possible, thus cutting down the potential for the spread of HIV in jails.

Testing prison populations was identified as a national priority by health authorities at the end of last year, and tests conducted in east China's Shandong Province amongst inmates of correctional facilities found 21 people to be HIV positive, provincial authorities said on July 26.

Besides Yunnan and Zhejiang, other provinces have rarely tested people in prisons, detention centers, labor camps or police detention. But between November and March, justice and health departments conducted nationwide testing of people in reeducation through labor camps, though no results have yet been released.

Yip said timely treatment of people with HIV can help prevent the virus being passed on to three to five others, and that prisoners' infection rate of three per thousand was more than four times that of the general population.

According to the prison management bureau, all Beijing prisoners with HIV/AIDS will be housed in Jinzhong Prison, where an attached hospital can provide medical treatment.

Yip said that in most US state prisons, prisoners are jailed in the same prison after accepting tests, whether HIV positive or not, and that "such a system has resulted in very few people acquiring HIV in prisons."

A high proportion of people with HIV are drug users, and Chinese law requires that their drug dependence be treated as soon as it is discovered. Those found using drugs after this are sentenced to three years' reeducation through labor.

(China Daily August 15, 2005)