>>Deadly Shadow Darkens Remote Chinese Village
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
DONGHU, China — The most striking
things about people from this village are
that their threadbare clothes seem way too
big and that nearly all of them share a hollow,
desperate look in their eyes.
Stooped and shuffling, frail before their time,
farmers who should be in their peak
productive years are unable to tend their
wheat fields or to care for their children. In
this picturesque central Chinese village of
4,500, every family is touched by gruesome
maladies: fevers, chronic diarrhea, mouth
sores, unbearable headaches, weight loss,
racking coughs, boils that do not heal.
Dozens of relatively young people have died
here in each of the last two years. In
December, 14 people in their 30's and 40's
died.
The culprit that has devastated not just the
health but the very soul of this impoverished
place is something that local officials here in
Henan Province have generally insisted is not
a problem: it is H.I.V., the virus that causes
AIDS.
While hints of this secret epidemic first
seeped out from remote areas of China's
countryside last year, the depth of the tragedy
and the staggering toll it has taken on villages
like Donghu are only now emerging, as
desperate, dying farmers have started to
speak out.
In Donghu, residents estimate that more than
80 percent of adults carry H.I.V., and more
than 60 percent are already suffering
debilitating symptoms. That would give this
village, and the others like it, localized rates
that are the highest in the world.
They add that local governments are in part
responsible. Often encouraged by local
officials, many farmers here in Henan
contracted H.I.V. in the 1990's after selling
blood at government-owned collection
stations, under a procedure that could return
pooled and infected blood to donors. From
that point, the virus has continued to spread
through other routes because those officials
have blocked research and education
campaigns about H.I.V., which they consider
an embarrassment.
"Every family has someone who is ill, and
many people have two or three," said Zhang
Jianzhi, 51, who gathered with others who
have the virus here. "I would guess more than
95 percent of people over the age of 14 or
15 sold their blood at least once," said Ms.
Zhang, still stout but suffering from fevers and
malaise. "And now we are all sick, with fever,
diarrhea, boils."
As China begins to confront its AIDS problem, the emerging evidence of virtually
blanket infections in villages like this one has become a huge wild card, whose
proportions are undefined.
Officially, the Chinese government says there are only 22,517 people in a country of
more than 1.2 billion who have been registered as H.I.V. positive — mostly drug
addicts and prostitutes — although health officials estimate that 600,000 carry the
virus.
But some Chinese doctors who have worked in the province said more than a
million people had probably contracted the AIDS virus from selling blood here in
Henan Province alone, where the problem is most severe. They add that while the
sale of blood has died out in the most severely affected villages, it continues
elsewhere to a lesser extent, both in Henan and other provinces. <<
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