HIV students to get a separate gaokao

percent 2012. In that widely circulated presentation, he showed his face and became familiar to the public. Guo said it made him a public figure in Linfen.

Hu said he and his fellow students were determined to attend universities in other parts of the country.

“Fewer people know us there and we are more likely to have a normal college life,” he said.

Chinese law safeguards the privacy of people with HIV and AIDS. Also, HIV is not tested during the routine health check for college entrance.

Guo said tolerance for HIVpositive people is much better at universities where students are adults, compared with primary and middle schools.

“I hope our children can lead a normal life after college,” he said. But for Hu, it’s much harder, as he became well known during many awareness-raising events.

With the gaokao approaching, “I feel increasingly nervous”, Hu conceded.

“I don’t know whether any college will accept me, whether the college teachers will treat me like they do others or whether other college students will study beside me and live in the same dormitory with me,” Hu said.

But he said he was committed to a lifelong fight against AIDS and related discrimination. Guo said he would help communicate with the universities that students from Linfen Red Ribbon School strive for normal and happy study lives.

After Hu and his classmates leave for colleges following the gaokao, Guo said, “We’ ll have our next college entrance examination in six to seven years, and I am confident a more tolerant and well-informed society then will welcome the HIV-positive children to sit in the examination side by side with the HIVfree ones,” he said.

Without intervention, 30 percent of HIV-positive women will pass on the virus to their children. Currently, roughly 5.7 percent of infected mothers give birth to an HIV-positive baby, government statistics show.