Although China's first HIV patient was reported almost 20 years ago, official government reaction was initially unrealistic and suboptimal. This situation was also compounded by a general community belief that HIV was simply a 'foreigners' disease that must be kept out (3) . Most early programs targeting HIV seem to reflect such notions. Even early predictions of HIV prevalence were hopefully optimistic, suggesting that it might only affect between 50,000 and 250,000 by the year 2000 (2) . As previously noted however, the real figure was probably double or triple these early government estimates. In many ways, Chinese officials were reluctant to acknowledge that their country was beginning to suffer from a disease, which was at the time, often associated with sexual promiscuity or moral degeneration (8) . The HIV issue appears to have been essentially ignored until the summer of 2002 (7), by which time the national HIV reservoir had probably reached a critical figure of 1 million. The problem was not solely due to central government inaction however, with local government officials in Henan province (one of the worst hit areas) often detaining aid workers, journalists and other health workers in futile attempts to cover up their own regional epidemics (7) .