Passing the Buck.docVIP

Passing the Buck 　　Xie Jun （pseudonym）， a patient with advanced lung cancer and in need of an urgent operation， was rejected by a hospital after disclosing， just before the operation， that he has HIV. 　　Xie published his account on the microblogging site Weibo on November 18， right after he was turned away for the operation. Just one year earlier， the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS （UNAIDS） named the hospital that rejected Xie―Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Changsha， central China’s Hunan Province―as a model hospital that had never rejected a patient diagnosed with AIDS. 　　The episode caused uproar among those living with HIV/AIDS in China and restarted a conversation in health circles about how to safely operate on high-risk patients. 　　A popular female activist called Miss Yue on Weibo forwarded Xie’s post with the comments，“It is a shame for a hospital with such an award to reject patients who are HIV positive. We need an apology， and the hospital needs to operate on this patient immediately.” 　　The incident came shortly before World AIDS Day， a UN event intended to raise awareness for people living with HIV/AIDS. The National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention under the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention released its updated HIV and AIDS statistics on November 30. According to the release， 575，000 people had been infected with HIV or AIDS in China as of the end of October， up from the 437，700 reported in 2013. Of those cases， 97，000 were newly reported between January and October. 　　Some HIV/AIDS activists warn that occurrences like the one at the hospital that turned Xie Jun away are likely to happen with more frequency. 　　 Isolation 　　Xiaoqiang， another activist living with AIDS in Shanghai， revealed on his Weibo that almost every HIV-positive patient has had experiences similar to Xie Jun. 　　“We definitely tell the doctors about our conditions before receiving treatment， but it has always caused u