AIDS patients in the central Chinese province of Henan will soon be jailed for complaining about mistreatment at the hands of local officials, as revealed by a recent report by Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin service.

According to RFA, local sources have reported that the construction of a facility is well underway in Nagling County. There are also fears that a second facility being planned somewhere else in Henan, which has been struck by an HIV/AIDS epidemic after a blood-selling campaign in the 1980s and 1990s.

“This is being done quietly,” an anonymous source told RFA. AIDS patients who are alleged to have violated law and discipline will be locked up there.” Government officials, however, deny the allegations, insisting that what is being constructed is a hospital to house AIDS patients.

Meanwhile, AIDS patients claiming that the government requested they sell their blood, have been urged to flee, and extensive measures are being taken to suppress further exposure.

On April 5, an AIDS activist and associate of former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was detained and put under house arrest "for affecting social order". Hu Jia was responsible for disclosing the truth of the situation of AIDS patients in Henan Province.

A leading health official in the Henan province, Ma Shiwen, was also arrested, for supposedly leaking secret documents on the infection of tens of thousands of villagers through blood transfusions.

The Henan AIDS epidemic has long been a sensitive issue for the CCP which has struggled to conceal the outbreak since its public disclosure in the mid-1990s.

Villagers were paid to give blood, which was then pooled with the blood of others, and used to extract plasma for hospitals. The remaining blood was then returned to the donors, creating an open door for the spread of disease.

At least 25,000 people and perhaps as many as one million were infected during the scandal, with entire villages contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The United Nations has warned that if swift action is not taken, China is in danger of an "AIDS catastrophe”. It estimates that by 2010, the country could have as many as 10 million AIDS victims if the outbreak is not taken seriously.

Some information in this report was provided by Reuters.