Posted on 27-8-2002

China's Blood Business Produces Orphans
by Alan Marston

When money rules without limits, people die. The current China blood
business attests to that fact, a very uncomfortable fact for the accountant
mentality that professes efficiency and profanes life. Rhetoric? Not for
millions of Chinese.

AIDS is creating an explosion of destitute orphans in China's rural
heartland and is driving large numbers of families into such dire poverty
that they can no longer afford to feed or clothe, much less educate, their
children. According to unpublished statistics from the United Nations
Development Program, the number of families living below the official
poverty line in Xincai, the county that includes Donghu, skyrocketed last
year, to 270,000 from 40,000. Breadwinners fell ill, and families spent
whatever they could scrape together for food and care.

Experts say the blow dealt by AIDS to villages has been sharper and crueler
than anywhere else in the world because of the unusual and efficient way
the disease spread here. Nearly the entire adult population of some
villages was infected almost simultaneously in the 1990's as poor farmers
flocked en masse to blood collection stations whose unsterile practices
introduced hefty doses of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, directly into
their veins. Now, the victims — including many married couples — are
falling ill and dying almost in unison.

In other countries suffering epidemics, grandparents or aunts and uncles
have helped the sick or taken in children. But here those relatives are
often themselves overwhelmed by AIDS. Also, because China's family planning
policies have limited families to one or two children, there is rarely an
older sibling to serve as a surrogate parent.

Some Chinese experts estimate that selling blood was common in dozens of
Henan Province's counties before it was banned in the mid-90's, leaving at
least a million people infected with H.I.V. In some places, selling blood
served as a source of emergency income — fast cash to fix a roof or pay off
a debt — but in others, like Donghu, most adults sold blood at least
occasionally, and many sold it every week. Like many of the most severely
affected villages, Donghu was near a blood collection station, one with
government ties. Commercials on local television assured villagers that
selling their blood was safe. Villagers estimated that more than half of
adults in Donghu were infected with H.I.V. in the early 1990's. A decade
later, the death rate is gathering steam, with several people dying each
week. The effects are largely hidden since local officials monitor access
to the village and have warned residents not to speak with reporters.

Extreme poverty has quickly and predictably followed, as able-bodied adults
can no longer work and families sell their possessions to pay for basic
needs. They borrow to buy medicine for suffering loved ones, but the simple
remedies they can afford are ineffective against AIDS. Compounding the
financial woes, grain, fruit and vegetables grown in these villages are
almost impossible to sell in nearby cities, whose residents are afraid of
contagion.

For families like Ren Dahua's, it has been a vicious cycle: poverty begat
AIDS, but AIDS has begotten previously unimaginable poverty. Mr. Ren
started selling blood to patch his mud and brick hut, to keep his children
dry when it rained. He also used the money to repay debts incurred from the
purchase of an ox, fertilizer and wheat seed. When the blood stations
opened in 1992, he and his wife rushed to sell their blood, for about $5 a
bag. He regarded it as an opportunity and sold blood more than 30 times.
When two more blood stations opened nearby — one affiliated with the local
Red Cross and another run out of a hospital less than 100 yards from his
front door — he sometimes visited daily. At the time, blood from several
farmers was pooled and centrifuged to skim off the plasma, which the blood
stations sold to companies to make medicines. The remaining red cells were
pooled and transfused back into the sellers, providing a gruesomely
efficient method for transmitting blood-borne diseases, including hepatitis
and AIDS...