Dr. Gao Yaojie, who exposed AIDS epidemic in rural China, passes away at 95

Guwahati: Renowned Chinese doctor and self-exiled activist Dr. Gao Yaojie who exposed the AIDS virus epidemic in rural China in the 1990s died on Sunday at the age of 95 at her home in the United States.

Dr Gao died of natural causes in New York, where she had been in exile since 2009. Her death was confirmed by Prof. Andrew J. Nathan, a scholar of Chinese politics at Columbia University who managed her affairs in the United States.

Dr. Gao was born in Cao County, Shandong in 1927.

A professor at the Henan College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Gao was a medical doctor who specialized in ovarian gynecology, and particular gynecological tumors.

She graduated from the School of Medicine at Henan University in 1954.

However, because of her intellectual background, Dr. Gao was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, leaving her in ill health.

She worked as a gynecologist in the Henan Chinese Medicine Hospital in 1974, was promoted to professor in 1986, and retired in 1990.

Dr. Gao was a member of the Henan People's Congress.

She became a household name across China in the late 1990s for her relentless activism in exposing a man-made AIDS crisis and for her work to remove the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Gao discovered that AIDS was spreading through ramshackle blood transfusion centers set up with official government backing.

She spoke against blood-selling schemes that infected thousands with HIV, mainly in her home province of Henan in central China.

Henan was the site of the Bloodhead scandal which resulted in the rapid spread of HIV during the 1990s among the impoverished rural population who sold blood at unsanitary Henan provincial and private collection centers where blood was collected from paid blood donors into a central tank, the plasma separated, and the remainder of the blood pumped back from the central tank into the donors of the same blood type.

Dr. Gao was well known in China and worldwide for her AIDS prevention work during the HIV epidemic in Henan, and for advocating much greater attention to people suffering from AIDS and children orphaned by AIDS.

Her split with the Chinese authorities on the transmission and the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic in the People's Republic of China hindered her further activities and resulted in her leaving for the United States in 2009.

She later lived alone in uptown Manhattan, New York City.

Gao's hard work and persistence, however, forced the government to admit that there was a problem with AIDS.

In 2003, the Chinese government admitted officially that AIDS existed in China and promised funds to prevent and control the disease.

In 2004 the United Nations Theme Group on HIV/AIDS in China released a report estimating that somewhere between 850,000 and 1.5 million adults in China were infected with HIV as of 2001.

In 2007, Chinese health officials estimated that only 750,000 adults were infected, but other sources estimated that the true number was closer to 1.5 million.

By October of that year, China had officially recorded 183,733 HIV cases, including 12,464 deaths. Even now, many people at risk remain untested — some are lurking in the shadows because of the stigma — and some experts fear the actual number could be much higher.