Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International - Thursday, 9 August 2001
Last year, AIDS activists warned the Chinese government that Henan had 100.000s of AIDS victims, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.
Most of them were infected with the HIV virus while selling their blood.
Foreign journalist who visited the area reported that in some village more than half of the population had either died or was dying.
The Chinese government, however, denied the reports as 'exaggerated and alarming.'
But now for the first time, it has admitted there is a problem.
The ruling Communist Party has sent a team of health officials, including a vice-minister of health, to one of the worst hit villages in Henan.
The team set up a special clinic in the village to give 24-hour care to those suffering from AIDS-related illnesses.
But health workers called the action a "cosmetic gesture," urging the government to take more substantive steps.
Villagers told health workers how blood was taken from several people at the same time and pooled in one container, where the blood plasma was removed.
The remaining blood was then pumped back into the donors' bloodstreams.
Such unsanitary methods, combined with the re-use of needles and un-sterilized equipment, caused the disease to spread rapidly.
More than half a million people in central China are believed to have become infected by selling their blood to local blood banks in the mid and late 1990s, reports said.
China reported 23,905 HIV/AIDS cases at the end of March this year but health experts say the actual number could be more than 600,000.
The United Nations has warned that China will have 10 million or more HIV/AIDS victims by 2010 unless it acts decisively.
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