Dr. Wan Yanhai is coordinator of the AIZHI (AIDS) Action Project, a non-governmental organization he founded in 1994. Based in Beijing, the project provides some of the only basic information on HIV/AIDS available to people in China through a widely used website (www.aizhi.org).

Dr. Wan was born in 1963 in Anhui, China. He graduated from Shanghai’s Fudan University School of Medicine in 1988, and was on the staff of the National Health Education Institute from 1988 to 1994. During this time, he established the first telephone hotline providing information on HIV/AIDS in China, and conducted a survey on homosexual men and HIV/AIDS related social behaviour. In 1992, he organized “Men's World,” a health promotion group for gay men, and set up three AIDS hotlines in Kunming, Shanghai and Shenyang. He was also a talk show host for a gay-rights radio program in Beijing, appeared on a number of local and national radio programs to talk about HIV/AIDS, and organized outreach projects to provide HIV/AIDS education on the street and in public parks.

In May 1993, government authorities Dr. Wan accused of promoting homosexuality and supporting prostitution. The HIV/AIDS hotline was reduced to a skeleton service and “Men’s World” was closed down. A year later, Dr Wan was dismissed from his post at the Health Education Institute and lost his government provided housing. He was forced to leave Beijing for 9 days in February 1994.

From 1994 to 1999 and again in 2002, Dr. Wan was on the faculty of the Beijing Modern Management College Department of Health and Anthropology. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California, Center for Feminist Research, ONE Institute from January 1997 to January 1998, and a visiting scholar at China Renmin University Social Psychology Institute from 1999 to 2002. From 2001 to 2002, he was a Fulbright New Century Scholar, and was a visiting scholar at California State University-Northridge Department of Sociology in 2002.

In 2000, Dr. Wan published HIV/AIDS Lawmakers Handbook and Suggestions for Legislation on HIV/AIDS in Beijing. He has spoken out widely in China and internationally on HIV/AIDS and human rights, the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons, and the rights of sex workers and intravenous drug users.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Wan Yanhai worked for the China’s Ministry of Health, where he was instrumental in setting up the first government programs to provide counselling and information about HIV transmission and AIDS. In this capacity, Dr. Wan helped to set up and run China’s first AIDS telephone hotline. The initial focus of the hotline was to provide general information about the nature of HIV/AIDS and methods that could be used to prevent HIV transmission. Under Dr. Wan’s direction, the hotline also became a vehicle to promote gay rights.

Health authorities had argued that the spread of HIV in China could be controlled by preventing HIV-infected persons from entering the country and by isolating HIV-carriers within China. This official line conflicted with Dr. Wan’s view that HIV/AIDS should be approached as a political and civil rights issue. With the government reluctant to accept that the gay community was at risk, he argued that homosexuals should be allowed to form support groups to help combat the spread of the virus. He also publicly advocated the formation of self-help groups for sex workers and intravenous drug users.

After he began speaking out about the rights of gays and other marginalized groups, Dr. Wan was accused of promoting homosexuality and prostitution. In 1993, the government’s HIV/AIDS counselling program was terminated. A year later, Dr. Wan was dismissed from his job. Dr. Wan was not discouraged. Determined to continue promoting China's fledgling HIV/AIDS awareness and gay rights movements, he has been resourceful in securing support and funding from a variety of private and international sources to continue his work.

Since the mid-1990s, he has coordinated a network of activists – the AIZHI Action Project – to tackle massive ignorance about HIV/AIDS and to expand prevention efforts in China. Through education, counselling, opinion polls, research, publishing, and conferences aimed at drawing up policy recommendations for the government, the AIZHI Action Project has provided the first glimpses into China's gay population and its health needs.

– excerpts from a 1992 article by Dr. Wan Yanhai published in the Chinese Journal of Health Education (reprinted in the South China Morning Post, July 1993).

Recently, the AIZHI Action Project has expanded its HIV/AIDS education and assistance programs to include sex workers and rural or migrant workers. Under Dr. Wan’s leadership, the group has coordinated a remarkable campaign in Henan Province, where hundreds of thousands of rural villagers have contracted HIV/AIDS through faulty blood collection practices.

Dr. Wan and his colleagues have worked to overcome government regulations, attempts by local authorities to cover up the rural HIV/AIDS epidemic, and widespread social prejudice against victims of the blood collection scandal and their families. In the face of ongoing police harassment and threats from government officials, AIZHI activists continue to visit Henan villages, documenting the extent of HIV infection and developing recommendations for social action and government assistance. As part of these efforts, Dr. Wan’s group has organized youth volunteers in Beijing to join the Henan campaign, working in partnership with youth in targeted villages to distribute basic information and educational materials on HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Wan has also arranged to bring HIV-infected villagers to Beijing and other urban centres to give talks at public forums, hoping to reduce ignorance and discrimination. His group has hosted photo exhibits and press conferences in Beijing and other cities to show the human face of people living with HIV/AIDS.

Currently, Dr. Wan and his colleagues are coordinating efforts to assist hundreds of orphans whose parents have died of AIDS. Facing enormous social discrimination, China’s AIDS orphans have been left with little government assistance and many have been forced out of school due to ignorance about how HIV is transmitted.

As a result of Dr. Wan’s leadership and ongoing commitment, the AIZHI Action Project has become a major information source on HIV/AIDS in China, and its publications and website have informed and influenced the work of the UN and other international groups in that country.

Despite the crucial role it has come to play in addressing HIV/AIDS in China, the AIZHI Action Project continues to face considerable difficulties. In July 2002, the organization was evicted from its offices at a private university in Beijing after the university was pressured by government officials to shut the organization down. The action came four days after a report from the United Nations criticized the government for inaction in the face of a raging AIDS epidemic, and some weeks after Dr. Wan's organization publicized details about the deaths of 170 persons in Henan province from HIV/AIDS contracted through blood collection.

Although Dr. Wan has traveled extensively outside China over the past eleven years, he has re-entered the country many times to organize efforts to educate people and collect the most up-to-date facts about the epidemic, despite the fact that his actions have often alarmed the Chinese government and put his own safety in jeopardy. He has made a name for himself as one of China’s most visible scholar-activists who, of necessity, take greater risks that their counterparts in the west.

An outspoken critic of Chinese public health, Dr. Wan nonetheless has many admirers within the official health care system. Many government officials know that much is seriously wrong and that changes need to be made, but are afraid to speak out and wonder if doing so would do any good. Dr. Wan’s work has made people feel less alone, persuading some that they can make a difference and that only widespread awareness and public pressure will make it possible to address HIV/AIDS and other serious health issues that China faces.

Dr. Wan has been on the front lines of fighting an epidemic that Chinese authorities would prefer to sweep under the rug. He has taken extraordinary personal risk to break down the conspiracy of silence around HIV/AIDS in China and to ensure protection for persons at highest risk.

– comment from letter of support for Dr. Wan’s nomination

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