Many had built their houses by selling blood. Some will even bribe traffickers to be able to sell more than once a day. Once we saw hundreds of people lined up there at the entrance of our village. I thought it must be a vegetable market or a movie. I felt so terrified because there is no sterilized equipment at all.
Villagers just tell the traffickers their blood type and then lie down on the ground to offer blood.
The practice has decreased since blood selling was made a criminal offense several years ago, but experts say it continues and black market blood is still used by hospitals and by drug manufacturers for making things like gamma globulin and clotting factors. It is a huge business, Dr. Gao said, blaming corrupt hospital officials. The United States government says that Chinese blood products are not sold in the United States. Dr. Gao, formerly one of the province's leading gynecologists, was drawn into AIDS work in 1996, when she was called out of retirement to consult with younger doctors about a woman whose illness confounded them. Dr. Gao concluded that the woman had AIDS, making the patient the first official casualty of the disease in the province.