China’s Deadly Cover-Up

Around one million people are infected with HIV in Henan Province in central China. Unlike other parts of China, where AIDS spread through drug use and prostitution ever since China opened its doors to the outside world, Henan's peasants received the virus by selling blood through government-monitored programs that pooled the blood, extracted plasma, and reinjected the blood back into the donors. Since the authorities control vast resources and the media, they could effectively mobilize a campaign against the devastations caused by AIDS, suggests writer Nicholas Kristof. He further argues that it is incumbent upon the government to seek drugs for these already impoverished peasant families who suffer due to governmental negligence. However, the opposite is happening. Chinese authorities continue to treat the crisis as a national scandal and cover up the situation by forbidding peasants to carry information outside at the cost of their meager subsidies. Such blatant mismanagement, Kristof concludes, "looks like a slow-motion slaughter on a… horrifying scale." – YaleGlobal