May 30, 2001
New York Times
BEIJING (Reuters) - Distraught peasants from an AIDS-ridden village in central China made an emotional appeal on Wednesday for drugs to ease their suffering and justice for the blood-peddlers who gave them the disease.
A group of seven peasants -- including two young boys whose parents died from AIDS -- told reporters they contracted the AIDS virus after selling blood to purchasing stations set up in Henan province to meet a shortage of blood in the mid-1980s.
The purchasers pooled blood donations in a large tub, extracted the valuable plasma, and then pumped it back into the villagers.
Now some 65 percent of the residents of Wenlou village in Henan have AIDS or the HIV virus, according to Chinese media reports.
``We don't have any hope, we don't have any money or medicine, we are waiting to die,'' said one woman from Wenlou, who traveled to Beijing in search of medical treatment.
``But we hope the person who is responsible for this tragedy, the blood collector, will be arrested,'' said the woman, who asked not to be identified.
She described how villagers sold blood for 40 yuan ($5) per sample to a state-run hospital where a large sign bore the slogan: ``It is a glory to donate your blood. Help the invalid and save the dying and there will be no harm to your body.''
Villagers used the blood money to pay local taxes and children's school fees, and to build mud and brick houses.
``They told us it was harmless to sell blood, so we believed. If they told us that it could cause AIDS, nobody would ever sell their blood,'' said the woman.
MYSTERY ILLNESS
Villagers were mystified by the illness until three years ago when a concerned doctor took 11 of them to have blood tests and they were diagnosed to be suffering from AIDS.
Since then dozens have died of AIDS and several hundred have tested positive for HIV.
``It is the people of the local bureau of public health who committed the crime but it is we who have become the victims,'' said a man from Wenlou who contracted AIDS about three years ago.
``I hope the local government can give us some free medicine to prolong our lives,'' said the man who also withheld his name. ''The people who collected blood should be responsible for it.''
Local authorities in Henan said they were not permitted to discuss the issue and national health authorities in Beijing declined immediate comment saying it was a ``sensitive question.''
According to official statistics, China had 22,517 known HIV carriers at the end of last year, most of them drug users, state media have reported.
But Health Ministry experts admit the number could be more than 600,000 and the United Nations has said China will have 10 million or more HIV/AIDS sufferers by 2010 unless it acts decisively and soon.