ENGLISH EDITION OF THE WEEKLY CHINESE NEWSPAPER, IN-DEPTH AND INDEPENDENT
Donghu, an AIDS Village
Summary:


As deaths mounted over the years, the village’s cemetery has run out of space for any new graves.

Every morning patients crowd into the Donghu village clinic, waiting for their routine infusions. As they lay there being treated, they chat and make small talk, and occasionally, share updates on their conditions with each other.

For years, these HIV-infected villagers have relied on continuous infusions for their survival. Like hundreds of villages elsewhere in Henan province, Donghu was stricken by HIV when villagers sold blood in droves to illegal blood banks back in the mid-1990s. Donors didn’t realize they were infected until some years later, when batches of them fell suddenly and seriously ill.

Many of them shunned getting checked for the virus out of fear of testing positive, which has made it impossible for researches to calculate reliable infection rates in the region.

Though these emaciated faces can appear as rickshaw riders in nearby towns or strained laborers at construction sites in bigger cities, most of them stay home, living a typical farmer’s life.



Lying in bed alone, this advanced AIDS patient is incapable of taking care of himself any more.


A patient.


The messy, crude clinic of the village.


With medical records piling on his desk, the only doctor of the village’s clinic treats dozens of AIDS patients every day.


Continuous infusions have left the arms of a patient scarred with pinholes and bruises.


A patient receives intravenous infusions in the isolation ward of a local hospital.


 

 

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