In 1991, medical researcher Shuping Wang was assigned to a plasma-collection center in Zhoukou, Henan, where paid donors supplied plasma under China’s expanding “plasma economy.” She found that donors carrying hepatitis C were not excluded, plasma from different donors was mixed, and tubing and other blood-contact equipment was reused to reduce costs. Wang reported the findings to local officials, who rejected changes on financial grounds. Her subsequent testing found hepatitis C antibodies in as many as 84.3% of people in the region at the epidemic’s height. After she took the evidence to national authorities, China introduced a 1993 rule requiring hepatitis C screening for plasma donors.
Wang began testing for HIV after identifying her first positive case in 1995 and estimated that 13% of people at local plasma centers were infected. Local officials again resisted screening, but her evidence helped prompt a 1996 national requirement for HIV testing. By 2001, the Chinese government acknowledged that more than 500,000 people in central China might have contracted HIV through unsafe collection practices. Wang was removed from her post, assaulted by a retired official, and had her independent testing site shut down after utilities were cut, destroying samples. She moved to the United States in 2001; her disclosures, alongside activist Gao Yaojie’s work, informed international understanding of China’s AIDS crisis and contributed to stricter blood-safety controls.
