Dr Peter Piot (second from Right), Executive Director of UNAIDS, talks with guests before the awarding ceremony at Beijing's Tsinghua University on Wednesday, September 17, 2008.

UNAIDS, the United Nations' vanguard of HIV/AIDS prevention, presented a special award to three individuals including Chinese basketball icon Yao Ming for their contributions in AIDS prevention in Beijing on Wednesday.

Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS and a leading scientist in microbiology, presented medals to UNAIDS Special Representative Serge Dumont and Tsinghua University Professor Li Xiguang and a representative of Yao Ming, who is unable to attend the award ceremony.

Dr. Peter Piot hoped awarding outstanding individuals from the sports, business, and media circles would enhance the effectiveness of AIDS education and prevention.

"When it comes to saving lives for people who are already affected with HIV/AIDS, you need treatment, doctors and nurses. But when it comes to saving lives through prevention, journalists, communicators can save more lives than doctors, because it is about communication, about education," Dr Peter Piot said.

Chinese Basketball star Yao Ming, who is currently helping reconstruction work in China's quake-battered Sichuan Province, is among the award winners. He won the prize for his support to fighting against the discrimination of people living with HIV. Yao Ming thanked UNAIDS for the award through a video message.

"I am honored to receive this esteemed award for AIDS work. Contributing to the fight against AIDS is something that I happily do as I believe that AIDS is one of the most important global problems. We can and we should all do something to stop the spread of AIDS and the discrimination of people living with HIV."

Another champion who won the medal, French businessman and Senior Vice President of the Omnicom Group Inc. Serge Dumont, is an anti-AIDS activist and UNAIDS' Special Representative. He reminded people who attended the ceremony that AIDS is a constant problem that needs constant public attention.

"The AIDS crisis is an ongoing crisis, the public always has a tendency to have a focus on an immediate crisis. When you have a tsunami, you focus on the thousands of deaths and hurricane... The problem is that how do you get interested in a sustained manner when you have an ongoing crisis that is happening everyday." Serge Dumont said.

AIDS work in China has in the pat 5 years been strengthened significantly by the increasing mobilization of many different non-health sectors such as private business and the media. However, much remains to be done.

A recent survey supported by UNAIDS found that 65 percent of the surveyed adult population were unwilling to live in the same household as a person living with HIV. Nearly 50 percent thought mistakenly that IHV can be transmitted through a mosquito bite.

The third winner, Professor Li Xiguang from Tsinghua University, is a leading scholar and educator in the field of journalism and communication and wrote many books on countering stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV.

In the past 5 years, Li opened several training camps in which journalists and people living with HIV dine, study and live together so that the media could better understand people with AIDS and avoid false perceptions.

Li said: "Journalists can make an important difference to how people think about AIDS through good reporting. False perceptions need to be overcome by communicating correct information in interesting and innovative ways."

According to UNAIDS, about 700,000 people are living with HIV in China and more than 30 million people are estimated to be practicing risky behaviors. These include people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men, sex workers, and clients of sex workers.

(CRIENGLISH.com September 18, 2008)