When walking down a narrow alley in a small north Chinese village in the mid-1990s, Dr Gao Yaojie heard a child crying desperately for its mother. “When I entered,” she later recalled, “I saw that the mother had hanged herself and the body was stiff.” The father had already died and the family was destitute after being defrauded by quack doctors. In another village in Henan province, half the houses hung white paper emblems outside to signify a death. The villagers called it the “nameless fever”, and orphans were left…
Tag: Aids and HIV
More people living longer with HIV/Aids in China, figures show
The prevalence of HIV/Aids in China has surged in the past 20 years, as improved treatment means people are living longer with the disease, according to official data. Figures published in October by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that between 2002 and 2021, the prevalence rate of reported HIV/Aids cases rose from 1.09 per 100,000 people to 79.62, an increase of more than 7,000%. Improved treatment as well as better access to testing have contributed to the soaring prevalence rates, even as the mortality rate for…
Ximei review – Ai Weiwei produces inspiring portrait of Chinese Aids activist
Produced by Ai Weiwei, this is a rousing portrait of Liu Ximei, an astonishingly resilient Aids activist; it also sheds light on a controversial government campaign that accelerated the epidemic in 1990s China. During the first half of the decade, poor farmers were encouraged to donate their blood in exchange for money. Due to a lack of health and safety standards, a staggering number of donors as well as those who received transfusions contracted HIV. In Ximei’s province of Henan, more than 300,000 villagers live with the debilitating effects of…