smorg

I read about this in the book China Road recently, but just had a discussion with someone and went to look it up. Seriously messed up.

Bloodhead scandal

From the early to mid-1990s a network of businessmen and government workers, known as “bloodheads”, set up hundreds of official and unofficial blood donation stations in Henan Province to supply the market for blood plasma created by hospitals and manufacturers of health products. The common practice of reusing needles, not screening for diseases, sellers traveling from station to station with false records to maximize their income, and the mixing the blood prior to centrifuging and re-injecting the separated red blood cells back into the peasant blood-sellers guaranteed the rapid spread of blood-borne diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B.

The blood stations began to be closed down in 1995 when the scale of the HIV outbreak began to become apparent. The ensuing coverup saw government officials take credit for dealing with the crisis which they caused, the harassment of journalists attempting to cover the story, and of whole villages dying of what was to them a mysterious disease because they had not been informed that they were likely to have been infected.[111]

In 24 August 2002 the prominent HIV/AIDS activist, Wan Yanhai, was arrested in Beijing and detained for a month for leaking an internal government report on the Henan’s AIDS crisis.

Compensation
In early December 2006, it was reported that a group of 19 people who contracted HIV from tainted blood transfusions at a hospital in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang were awarded 20 million yuan (US$2.5 million) in compensation. The landmark case involves the largest single group stricken by HIV in China. Eighteen of the victims will receive a one-off payment of $25,500 from the hospital and an additional $380 in monthly payments. Payment will go to the family of the one victim who has already died from AIDS.

Technorati Tags: china, aids