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.