China’s Longest-Surviving AIDS Patient Dies

China’s longest-surviving AIDS patient dies

BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) — Jia Lin, China’s longest-surviving AIDS patient died last month at 44 after ten years of suffering, reported Tuesday’s China Daily.

An incurable drug addict, he was the first diagnosed with full- blown AIDS in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, where the municipal government spent more than 800,000 yuan (98,800 US dollars) for his treatment.

He was one of first six to be treated for AIDS with traditional Chinese medicine.

The newspaper quoted Beijing News as saying that Jia died of overdose of heroin, but a death certificate revealing that he died of liver prostration caused by the HIV virus.

The world’s longest-surviving AIDS patient on record is an African child, who contracted the HIV virus at birth from the mother and died at 12, said the newspaper.