The Dali City Health Bureau, in the Yunnan Province of China, funded the opening of a “gay bar” in the city in order promote a reduction in the transmission of AIDS. The Health Bureua hopes the bar will provide a center for educating homosexual men on how to prevent the transmission of AIDS, a rising problem in the country. The government invested 120,000 yuan (US $ 17,575) in the new bar, which officially opened this week on World AIDS Day.
In recent years, HIV/AIDS has become a growing problem in China and according to most recent reports, sexual transmission accounts for 72 percent of all new HIV/AIDS transmissions. Homosexual and bisexual men account for nearly half of those new transmission.
The central government has nearly tripled funding for AIDS control in order to combat the disease. Funding grew from 390 million yuan in 2003 to 994 million in 2008.