Gao Yaojie, a gynecologist who became China’s most famous AIDS activist before going into exile in the United States, died Sunday in New York at the age of 95.
Gao moved to New York in 2009, after years of persecution by Chinese authorities for reporting on the magnitude of the AIDS epidemic in Henan province, linked to the blood trade.
She was one of the first doctors to become aware of the mysterious disease that was killing villagers in the mid-1990s. Gao realized that a large number of poor farmers had contracted the AIDS virus by selling blood in blood drives. unsanitary collection approved by the government. .
As local authorities tried to silence the scandal, Gao began purchasing medicines and basic supplies with his own money to treat the sick.
Experts estimate that in Henan province alone, at least one million people have contracted HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) through the blood trade.
Gao Yaojie became one of the most vocal activists on the plight of AIDS patients in China, and received international recognition for her work. For years, Chinese authorities refused to issue her a passport and frequently placed her under surveillance.
In 2001, China finally recognized the magnitude of the crisis and, three years later, even gave Gao an award. But in 2007, authorities placed her under house arrest to prevent her from traveling to the United States to receive an award from then-Senator Hillary Clinton.
Beijing ended up relenting and letting her go, after Clinton appealed to then-Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Gao Yaojie was part of the dwindling generation of people who came of age before the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949.
Because her parents were landowners, the gynecologist was demoted and forced to clean hospital bathrooms for eight years, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the mass campaign that plunged the country into a decade of chaos and isolation.
Source: TSF
