And those are only the ones in serious condition. The light ones might not even know they have it yet. Despite the long-playing tragedy, villagers said they had not yet been visited by health officials from Beijing, or even from the provincial capital, Zhengzhou. In fact, they have not even seen officials from the county seat, Xincai even though Donghu sits just at the edge of that dusty rural city, at a point where tiled buildings, tinny trucks and paved roads give way to mud-brick huts, oxen and dirt paths. Doctors and nurses at Xincai's hospital dispense medicine to treat the symptoms of a disease they only poorly understand.
Patients here die painful deaths with minimal care.
In the early 1990's, Chinese biological product companies some with foreign partners started relying on China's isolated, impoverished heartland as an ideal place to get cheap, clean plasma, the part of the blood that is used to make medicines like gamma globulin and clotting factors. Health officials in the province often became enthusiastic middlemen, setting up blood-collection stations. Some profited personally from the trade, while others saw it as a harmless way to bring cash into a destitute region with few resources. Henan is one of China's poorest provinces, and Xincai among Henan's most remote counties, a six-hour drive from the capital. Money from selling blood put roofs on mud- brick homes and paid school fees.