Listening to NPR this morning. China has a soaring HIV rate. Main cause: blood donation.
[/Southpark Mayor] Whatwhatwhat!?!?![/Southpark Mayor]
Seems some of the fucknut local politicians over there organize blood (actually plasma) drives to raise money. Offer farmers and such the equivalent of 2 weeks’ wages to donate.
Problem: Chinese culture believes it’s bad to lose blood, regardless of the cause. So donation center hooks up 6-10 donors to ONE machine, their blood goes into ONE BIG centrafugal barrel, plasma is separated, and the red blood cells, now a big cocktail of all the donors’ blood, goes back into everyone.
Words just fail me. Utterly fail me. I feel pity for the poor people who just want to help feed their families, and utter disgust for the government of China. Jesus, a third grader should now that this method is barbaric and stupid.
Macro Man, yep it is a huge problem, especially in the impoverished countryside. This is not and never has been officially condoned, although certainly some corrupt local officals have been guilty of this.
I just want to add that this practice generally happened 4-5 years ago. China is a big place and perhaps you can find this happening now, but that would be the vast exception. There are education campaigns and official movements to prevent such abuses now. What you are seeing is people infected years ago, and those that they in turn infected, are now coming down with full blown HIV. To wit, dealing with the result now of ignorance a few years ago. It is going to take a very huge toll in suffering.
Yeah, the reporter said that it was much more widespread in about five years ago, but that, at least in the region she was visiting, wasn’t going on as much. Geeesh.
There still is a large chunk of the world that doesn’t believe HIV causes AIDS. And for a lot of poorer countries what we would consider to the basic level of sanitation in medical facilities isn’t even up to the pipe dream level.
The real problem, as I see it, is that for 5 years or so, an artificially (and vastly) inflated population of new vectors of infection have been going about their lives, all unsuspecting, and further spreading HIV by the usual means, in provinces that are perhaps the least well-equipped to hand the problem…
In the U.S., this is the normal procedure for donating plasma without losing red cells… except, of course, it’s done on an individual basis so you get your own blood back, with no contact with anyone else’s. Jesus, did they even make sure the 6-10 people were all the same type? And never mind HIV, didn’t they believe in TB, Hepatitis, or any blood-borne disease?
:mad: