Village votes to banish boy, 8

Authorities in a Chinese village have launched a “thought education” campaign after more than 200 villagers signed a petition to banish an eight-year-old boy infected with the HIV virus, state media said.

People in China living with HIV and AIDS face widespread discrimination and stigma, with even medical workers sometimes refusing to touch them.

Although the government has implemented polices and legislation aimed at stopping HIV/AIDS discrimination, enduring misconceptions about the disease have led to children being barred from school and parents abandoning children.

Kun Kun, an eight-year-old boy from a village in the southwestern province of Sichuan contracted the virus from his mother, the People’s Daily newspaper said on its website.

After he was diagnosed with the virus in 2011, he was expelled from school and ostracised by villagers, with one of them calling him a “ticking time bomb”, said the newspaper, the official paper of the ruling Chinese Communist Party..