China Seeks to Evacuate U.S. AIDS Victim

U.S. and Chinese officials were working today to arrange for a U.S. military jet to evacuate an American tourist hospitalized in southern China with AIDS, an American diplomat said.

An official at the quarantine office of the Yunnan provincial Public Health Department, who gave her name as Mrs. Wen, identified the American as Brent Anderson, 38, a newspaper editor.

She said he was admitted June 18 to the Yunnan Province No. 1 People’s Hospital in the southern city of Kunming suffering from a cough and fever. He originally was diagnosed as having a lung illness, but further tests showed he had AIDS.

Airlines Refuse Passage

The American diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that an American was ill in Kunming with AIDS, and that U.S. and Chinese authorities were working to evacuate the patient via a U.S. Air Force plane from the Philippines.

Other reports said China’s national airline, CAAC, and Northwest Orient Airlines had refused to transport Anderson. United Airlines, the only other American airline flying to China, said it had not been approached.

Wen said she did not know the patient’s hometown or what newspaper he worked for.

Mark Sullivan, another American patient at the Yunnan No. 1 People’s Hospital, said commercial airlines would not transport Anderson because they were not equipped to provide the necessary medical care and because countries where the planes would stop were reluctant to allow landing with the patient.

Three AIDS Deaths

Sullivan said he did not know Anderson’s hometown but that his father lives in Columbus, Ohio, and officials were trying to send him there.

China has had only a few reported cases of AIDS and just three confirmed AIDS deaths: a Chinese hemophiliac, a Chinese man who died after returning home from New York and an Argentine tourist.

China recently has begun requiring all foreigners who plan to remain in China more than a year to be tested for AIDS, but the requirement does not apply to tourists who are in the country for less than a year.