User:Kosigrim/GaoYJ

Gao Yao-Jie (also G Yaojie or G Yao Hie), 80-year-old gynecologist, was born in 1927 in Cao county, Shandong province. She has graduated in 1954 from Henan University Medical School. Dr. Gao Yao-Jie was professor and senior chief doctor of OB/GYN dept. at Henan College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the 7th Henan provincial people’s representative. In her youth, she was a rare woman admitted to medical school. She survived Japanese bombing raids during the 1940s and worked delivering babies as an obstetrician in the 1950s. When the famines of the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1960 unleashed mass starvation, Dr. Gao sometimes gave her food ration tickets to emaciated women. During the violent class struggles of the Cultural Revolution from 1965 to 1975 she was labeled a “black element”, a term for members of the former ruling class or rightist intelligentsia. In a 2003 interview, she recalled surviving one night during that era by hiding among the bodies in a hospital morgue to avoid Red Guards.

AIDS epidemy

Dr. Gao involvement in AIDS began when she learned that HIV was silently spreading through Henan in the 1990s. She has witnessed numerous cross-contamination among blood donors, and hospital patients who obtained contaminated blood through blood transfusion. She has discovered that peasants are encouraged to sell blood, leading to a massive blood drive in central regions of China. To the end of 1996s Dr. Gao collected and investigated considerable amount of first-hand information, to prove the serious aftermath of so called “Blood/plasma economy” that began in Henan. She concluded that the majority of AIDS patients (up to 90%) in China have acquired HIV through blood transfusion. In contrast to the western world, the main cause of AIDS/HIV is sexual/drug abuse. Henan officials say only 11,000 people have been infected. The World Health Organization reports at least 100,000. The majority of those infected don't even know they have the disease.

The numbers

In 2002, a United Nations-commissioned report, entitled China’s Titanic peril, estimating that China had about 1 million cases of HIV, and that it was on the brink of an “explosive HIV/AIDS epidemic…with an imminent risk to widespread dissemination to the general population”. The report continued: “a potential HIV/AIDS disaster of unimaginable proportion now lies in wait.” A few months later, the US National Intelligence Council estimated that 1-2 million people were living with HIV in China, and predicted 10–15 million cases by 2010. Other reports at this time were similarly pessimistic: from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC, USA), HIV/AIDS was referred to as China’s timebomb; and from the American Enterprise Institute as the AIDS typhoon. However, as Wu and colleagues note, by 2006 the number of people living with HIV/AIDS is estimated to be 650 000—a figure revised downwards by 200 000 from 2005. After a slow start and reluctance to recognise the existence of risk activities in its population and of the HIV epidemic, China has responded to international influences, media coverage, and scientific evidence to take bold steps to control the epidemic, using scientifically validated strategies.

Yao-Jie's campaign

For the next 11 years, Dr. GaoYao-Jie has spent over 1 million RMB (~125, 000 USD$), her 3 rewards of 80,000 USD, publisher's fees for her's several books, 57,000 RMB donation from a local TV station, and most of her pension for printing HIV/AIDS educational materials, helping [[AIDS] patients and AIDS orphans (whose parents died from AIDS). She helped 164 AIDS orphans, send out 240,000 AIDS free brochures. People have been seeing her small feet (being wrapped as results of old Chinese tradition), walking on the country road, pushing her bike that carried those free AIDS brochures to the post office over and over…She edited nearly 10,000 readers’ letters, made in a book called Ten Thousand letters, to let the world hear the most vulnerable Chinese’ voices.

Awards

Dr. Gao has received past recognition in China. She was given a “Ten People Who Touched China in 2003” award from the government’s television network. But she was prevented from traveling outside China to receive awards in 2001 and 2003. Dr. Gao was notified in October that she would be honored by the Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nonprofit women’s advocacy group. She is one of four Chinese women being recognized at a March 14 ceremony in Washington, which will also honor women from India, Guatemala and Sudan. Published: February 6, 2007 By JIM YARDLEY China Places AIDS Activist Under House Arrest www.nytimes.com

Dr. GaoYao-Jie overcame various political barriers to disclose the truth (the cause) behind China’s AIDS epidemic – blood donation in central China regions.

See also

• AIDS
• HIV

* Category:HIV/AIDS Category:Pandemics