Olympics 2008 Visitors Face Health Challenges

(Beijing, China) Hey, Olympic sports fans, don't forget your shots. Although China is now recognized as a modern economic giant, one societal element is lagging behind.

Specifically, there are health concerns since sanitation in China is generally poor. So poor that, according to Shukan Jitsuwa magazine, some sports contingents preparing for the 2008 Olympics have announced that they will train at camps in Japan.

"Big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where many foreigners visit, are fairly clean, but in places the foreigners don't see, it's terrible," says a Japanese man who spent time as an exchange student in China. "You can find heaps of uncovered rubbish piled two or three meters high, and when it rains, the stuff dissolves and runs off in all directions.

"Except perhaps for the highest-class restaurants, the kitchens tend to be filthy," the man adds. "They're enough to make even Chinese want to throw up."

Apparently, the filth even defeats the strong Chinese stomach, a strength of which I was unaware but could have guessed.

After devoting a paragraph to Beijing's notorious smog and its lack of safe drinking water -- a potential source of type-B hepatitis -- Shukan Jitsuwa warns visitors against rabies. Yes, it's still a concern: rabies is 100 percent fatal unless promptly treated and about 2,500 people in China die from it every year, so dogs are to be avoided at all costs.

"Rabies has been present in China since ancient times," notes [author Masahiro] Miyazaki. "But when people raised dogs for meat it wasn't much of a problem. More recently, however, they've been keeping them as house pets, which has made it more dangerous. The problem is that unethical dog breeders raise the animals in abysmal conditions. So rabies has become endemic."

Visitors to the upcoming Olympiad, which will run for 17 days beginning from August 8, will also need to be on their guard against AIDS. A 2007 report issued by the Chinese government estimated the number of HIV carriers at 700,000. The most likely method of contagion would be between Japanese male tourists and local prostitutes, who are said to number 20 million nationwide.

Therefore, rabies became a bigger problem when people transitioned from eating dogs to keeping them as pets and, just think, the number of hookers in China equals the entire population on the continent of Australia. Crikey!