Selling blood was common in rural areas such as Henan, where Dr Gao lived, in the 1980s and 1990s. Limited economic opportunities among farming communities left them with few other options to make a living – and blood-selling was often backed by local governments. But with few cases of HIV being diagnosed in rural China at the time, and low awareness of the disease, blood was also collected from HIV+ patients, leading to the spread of the disease.
