The Rise and Fall of the Plasma Economy in Henan Province - Research Paper Example

? The Rise and Fall of Plasma Economy in Henan Province China, 1991-Present: The controversial role played by local officials in relation to social stigma Student name University name Introduction With a very huge population of not less than ninety two million, Henan is without doubt the most populous province in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This province is also on the threshold of undergoing the world’s deadliest crisis of HIV/AIDS unless some serious intervention takes place. Even though the public health administration vehemently denied the presence of an AIDS epidemic in 1996, recent research by independent bodies now estimate that at least 700, 000 people in Henan are infected with HIV&AIDS(Hayes, 2010). Presently, the villagers who got infected from the sale of blood are succumbing to the disease each new day. Even the PRC has different provinces that have differing rates of HIV prevalence, Henan region stand out as a very important province due to the high prevalence and death rates. . This paper will examine the major causes of the rise and fall of the plasma economy as well as the controversial role that the government has played in the HIV/AIDS epidemic, resultant cover-up and the correlation between governments and social stigma, by asking researching questions such as how ‘blood heads’ have possibly caused millions of rural dwellers in Henan province to contract the virus, why did government cover up the whole issue from the public and if local officials re-enforce the social stigma towards HIV/AIDS. It is also clear that China had a change of heart towards policy management following the aftermath of the SARS catastrophe. When SARS broke out in china in 2003, the health administration of China was slow in responding to it. For instance, WHO was only notified after it became apparent that the epidemic was growing worse by the day and even then, China provided doctored statistics to try to conceal how serious the situation was on the ground. The result was that China lost so many patient and many health practitioners were also slain by this disease while in the line of duty. This paper will discuss these cover-ups in detail and how the impact of SARS affected government policy on HIV& AIDS. What led to the plasma Economy& the Bloodheads The republic of China began a major reform process in the year 1978. One strategy that was employed by the government to help resuscitate the economy was to given incentives to the formation of enterprises in the rural areas. This included the private business, any form of liberalised foreign trading, education as well as industrial production services. The state decided to relax the control it previously had on prices in order to encourage a free environment for trade. These reforms in the economy can be said to have introduced the capitalist market principles in China. One of the most notable developments during this time was the decentralization of state power. The local administrations in the respective provinces were given the leeway to do what was best for their province as far as improving their respective economies was concerned. This led to a new outlook in the trade environment since the private enterprises in the villages and townships began to do very well while the state owned companies began to decline. The economic reform of china became the most important political discussion. Local leaders depended on the approval of the prevailing leaders in order to make it in the new centralised outfit. It also led to rigorous competition among career people with each one seeking to outshine his colleagues in order to advance their careers. This ultimately led to the growth of the local economies(Zhou,2005). The competitions that were seen in the provinces were important since they helped spur economic growth of the respective provinces and consequently improved the national GDP. For a long time, the central regions of china had primarily focused on processing of food. This meant that they couldn’t surpass the coastal regions which had ports that opened them up to the outer world for foreign trade. This is the main reason why the economic boom witnessed in the year 1978 had not significant impact on inland china. The only hope for the central provinces was concerted efforts in developing heavy industries as opposed to the light food processing they were used to. This research paper particularly looks at a specific province in China,Henan, which is located in the central part of China. Henan was considered as one of the economic drawbacks in China during the 1980s. However, by the 1990s Henan's economy was expanding at an even faster rate than that of China overall, especially during the period 1991-1995, whereby a special economy has been created by the Henan local officials in particular, which refers to the Plasma Economy and further, causes a huge tragedy in the public health of the province (Hunter, 2005; Brooks, 2001). The issue of plasma economy can be blamed on the abandoning of the rural commune system which ultimately led to the degradation of the public health system in the rural areas. There was pressure both on the health care providers and the patients to get more money. The medics needed money to avail their services better while the patients needed more money to foot the hospital bills (Hayes, 2010). In addition to this, there was a growing demand for locally available blood. As a result of the pressure that was on both stakeholder and shareholder of the health sectors in the rural areas, the local officials in the Henan province opted to get new blood, possibly locally. This is what graduated to the plasma economy later on. Prior to the 1990s, most of the blood used in the hospitals in mainland China was imported from other places. However, the depreciation of wellness and health of people in the developed countries led to the ministries of health, foreign trade and economic cooperation, and the customs general to put advisories on the importation of blood products like plasma,globulin, blood albumin, and hematoblast (Zhao, 2012). The restriction imposed on the importation of blood by the government led to an increase in the demand for blood in the market. In response to this demand, local officials in Henan were invited for local investment by foreign pharmaceutical companies, where numerous plasmapheresis stations were built(He, 2000). The foreign companies pumped in investment which resulted into the establishment of centers with the necessary technological mechanism to support blood product establishments. Incentives were given to the locals to donate blood and since most of the people in Hena were poor, they were glad to get some source of income and readily donated their blood. The sell of blood plasma to the companies that had just come into the region by the improvised farmers was steadily on the increase and soon, unregulated agents also came into the business, they were referred to as “blood heads.” Notably, these campaigns did not give regard to proper sterilization procedures and the needles, the blood bags as well as other sensitive equipment were often reused(Hayes, 2010). The plasmapheris process is one that requires stringent sanitation procedures. Usually, the blood plasma is harvested from the blood of the donor and rest of the blood constituents are fed back to the circulatory system of the donor. This blood plasma is then purchased by the pharmaceutical firms that use it to synthesise blood products that are required in the hospitals. The unscrupulous entrepreneurs were more concerned with profit maximization than the health of the people so they often mixed the blood of different donors in the same centrifuge and that ultimately led to huge scale contamination of the blood harvested (He, 2000). The impact of this carelessness was soon realized in 1995 and it led to the closure of most of stations in Henan province. Consequently, the collection of blood was restricted to certain areas. However, the demand for blood plasma still continued to grow by the day. It is clear that the bloodheads led to many poor people contracting HIV and especially so in the province of Henan. According to estimates of the New York time in 2000, thousands of poor rural dwellers had contracted the virus as a result of the lack of sanitation during the transfusion process. In fact, even though there is commendable progress in the battle with HIV in china, the blood supply still remains haunted with the virus (Kam, 2003). There is now a call by the international community for the government to take responsibility and compensate the thousands that were enticed by money to participate in the unsafe donation of blood and thereby got infected with the deadly virus. The local officials’ cover-ups The AIDS problem in china was somewhat negligible prior to 1995. There were only around a hundred cases per year of new HIV/AIDS infections across the expansive country in the period 1985-1995. However, there was an exponential increase from the hundreds of annual infections to thousands from 2005 thanks to the introduction of the plasma business. Even though all 31 provinces had registered AIDS patients by 1998, most of the victims came from Henan province which was the epicentre of the plasma business. The number of patients continued to increase by the day and as at the statistics gathered in 2003, there were at least 840,000 carriers and at least 80,000 patients of AIDS in China (Yanzhong, 2005). On closer examination, the same reaction that the government gave to SARS in the initial stages is the same reaction the government gave to HIV/AIDS. All the PRC government did was denial of the seriousness of the catastrophe. There are many reasons why the government ignored HIV in China. The first reason is the same reason that AIDS was ignored for some time by the American government. Initially, AIDS was thought to be a disease that was spread by homosexuality and since society was generally hostile to homosexuals, there was no incentive on the government to take action. As Yanzhong (2005) explains, Chinese scientists were initially convinced, just like was the case with their American counterparts, that AIDS was a disease caused solely by homosexuality and promiscuity. Both were not only illegal in China but they were also contrary to the moral standards of the Chinese society. In fact, since homosexuality was unheard of in China, the government was convinced that there was no way AIDS would be found in China. This would explain why the government kept insisting that there was no AIDS in Henan (Beyrer, 1998). When new knowledge came in that revealed that AIDS could be transmitted through other means like blood transfusions, countries like USA moved fast to sensitize the public about the disease. However, the only thing that China did was to put a ban on the importation of blood products but they did not educate the public about the prevention of the disease. In fact, a research done in Beijing and Henan province in the year 2000 found that 20% of the respondents had no clue what AIDS is and a whooping 49.7% thought that AIDS was curable (Yanzhong, 2005). As if not enough, the Chinese government continued to manipulate the media by ensuring that nothing negative was reported in both the electronic and print media. For instance, the AIDS Prevention institute in Henan published information on the deadly virus around the world on their website but did not mention any single thing about how HIV & AIDS was affecting the people of Henan. It also did not mention any link of the epidemic to the paid blood donations or even the responsibility that the local administration and respective medical organisations had in the business (UNAIDS 2002). Another case in point is the China STDs prevention information website. The organisation failed to stress how serious the epidemic in Henan was. According to this website, the province of Henan is merely another a province included in its statistics of the AIDs virus in the country. There was absolutely no hint on the website on how grievous the situation was in Henan in order to spur closer attention from interested parties. Ironically, the website actively promoted a drink that originates from the Henan province which is known to boost the immunity of people (Wan, 2001). The official health newspaper (Zhongguo Jiankang Bao), published by the ministry of health to highlight on the important prevailing health issue in the country also failed to highlight the issue of HIV and its relation to the sale of blood in the province of Henan. Ironically, the paper repeatedly praised the health sector in province for their “great leaps forward” as far as strengthening the management of diseases. The paper also talked about the improved management of the “voluntary blood donations” since the health workers were equipped to ensure safety of the donors. By reading the health paper, and any other website that had relevant information, one would assume that there wasn’t any AIDS crisis in Henan. In fact, there is a health worker that reportedly told the U.S. Embassy Beijing Environment Science and Technology Section officer (ESTOFF), that they did not have any cases of AIDS in Henan province since they had applied stringent prevention methods ion their clinical procedures (Hunter, 2005). The legislative arm of the government also promulgated section twenty of the constitution which states in part that, “Information about the AIDS epidemic in China is released only by the Chinese Ministry of Health." For a long time, the Chinese government looked that the issue of AIDS as a top secret issue and information was seldom released to the general public. The general perception among most of the health workers was the revealing of such information would amount to a criminal offence. This appeared to be the norm for a long time until the international as well as the local media began to highlight on the issue very recently (Hunter, 2005). The revelations of the epidemic are in fact an initiative of the media since the health ministry did nothing about sensitizing the public. Even in the light of this, the state controlled China health news still continued to report only positive things about the crisis. For instance, the media house reported that Henan was blessed to have a public health administration that was void of corruption which was the main reason why the region was making significant progress in the fight against HIV. However, experts believe that there is nothing further from the truth and they mainly blame the corrupt administration for the escalation of the epidemic (Wang, 2000). If compared to other nations. China was arguably lagging 10 years behind in taking positive action to curb AIDS. Most countries had begun mobilizing resources to fight the disease as early as 1985 as soon as the first cases were realized. It is also clear that nations like Thailand and Vietnam had more budgetary allocations for dealing with AIDS than China from far back as 1986 for Thailand and 1991 for Vietnam (Yanzhong, 2005). China officials were however more interested in making some cash from the booming plasma business and public health seemed to be a secondary concern. Initially, there was a general misconception that AIDS was a disease for homosexuals. Homosexuality was considered a very immoral act and it was not allowed in the moral code of China. This was the main reason why the victims of AIDS were stigmatised by the local officials. As Cao et al (2006) explain, UNAIDS warns that social stigma affects the efforts of curbing the disease. This is because people are more reluctant to seek test and medication in societies that stigmatize HIV victims. Due to the fear of being labelled immoral, most people feared going for tests or even treatment. Since there were many people who didn’t know their HIV status, they continued to spread the disease not only through the contaminated medical equipment that was used when they were donating their blood but also through other means like sexual intercourse (Yanzhong, 2005). The SARS epidemic and how it impacted government policy on HIV The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic began in 2002 when the first case was detected in Guangdong province. The following year in February, China notified the World Health Organisation (WHO) of the epidemic and WHO responded by issuing an international alert about the disease (Rosenthal, 2003). The wall street journal published an article that called for countries to rethink about their travelling links with China until China had put in place an authentic and transparent public health campaign. After the widespread criticism of how the PRC handled the SARS outbreak, the government decided to improve its public health approach. It is now common knowledge that China did not respond quickly enough to SARS. It is also common knowledge that the government suffered serious consequences due to delayed response to the epidemic. This is believed to be the main reason why the government opted to do more about HIV. The Chinese public health sector decided to be more proactive b anticipating health issues and tackling them as effectively as they could before it was too late like was the SARS case. This led to the first 5- year action plan in prevention and management of AIDS. The project was dubbed “four frees and one care.” It means that it provides for free HIV tests, Free ARTs as well as the prevention of any possible mother to child infections (Hayes, 2010; Wang et al., 2010). All over the world, the successful control of HIV depends hugely on collaboration with the international community (Eberstadt, 2002). China has participated in numerous internationally collaborated initiatives that are aimed at fighting the HIV virus and as a result, they have been beneficiaries of at least 526 million dollars from the different organisations that are involved in the diseases (UNAIDS, 2002). When such projects were first introduced in the last two decades, they were typically stand-alone initiatives that were often affected by the politics of the day (Eckholm,2003). Conclusion and recommendations Ever since the AIDS virus was discovered, there have been more than 70 million victims around the world. Some countries have been successful while others have not been able to curb the disease for various reasons. In China’s case, the main reason for the failure is the lack of political good will. The PRC government seems to be more concerned about the economy than it is about the health and well being of her people. This can clearly be seen in the factors that led to the emergence of the plasma economy. The businessmen were more interested in the harvesting of the blood than they were about the health of the people they were receiving the blood from or the recipient of the blood products that would be manufactured from the blood. The businessmen were so interested in making good profit that they decided to reuse syringes and other important tools that should never be reused (Hayes, 2010).This led to the widespread infection of the residents of Henan with the HIV virus. Instead of the government taking responsibility for the same, they attempted to cover it up. However, the real truth eventually emerged thanks to the media. Even after this, the government was still slow in responding to the crisis. However, after the SARS epidemic, the government began to rethink about its policy in public health administration and there is now more concerted effort to control the disease than there was before. For instance, In the 2003 SARS incident, the country lost so many health workers who were exposed to the infections diseases as they were attending to the patients. This should be taken as a lesson and measures should be taken to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Even though every government should strive to better the economy, it beats logic to strive to improve the economy of a nation without doing anything about reducing the disease burden. Human resource is the most important of resources in any economy and a health society means a better work force and ultimately a better economy. The Chinese leadership should appreciate this fact and continue to take more interest in controlling HIV/AIDS. The ball was set rolling by Yi Wu, the chair of the newly constituted national Coordinating Committee on HIV/AIDS. Yi was on the Guangdong to meet the SARS victims face to face and even shook hands with them (Yanzhong, 2005). This was very symbolic since leadership was now being called to be more hands-on and tackle the health issues that faced them instead of just covering thing up. If the health administration takes this approach, then there is hope that the AIDS epidemic will be nipped in the bud References Beyrer, C. (1998). War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia, London, Zed Books. Brooks, A. (2001). Bad blood spreads Aids in China. BBC. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1359670.stm Cao, X. et al. (2006). Understanding HIV-Related Stigma and discrimination in a blameless population. AIDS education and prevention, 18(6):518-528. Eberstadt, N. (2002).The Future of AIDS.Foreign Affairs 81(6):30. Eckholm, E. (2003). The sars epidemic: epidemic; china admits underreporting its sars cases. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/world/the-sars-epidemic-epidemic-china- admits-underreporting-its-sars-cases.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Hayes, A. (2010). AIDS, Bloodheads and Cover-ups: The “ABC” of Henan’s AIDS Epidemic. Retrieved from http://eprints.usq.edu.au/5234/1/Hayes_AQ_v77n3_AO.pdf He, A. (2000). Revealing the “Blood Wound” of the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Henan Province.US Embassy (Beijing). Retrieved from www.usembassy- china.org.cn/english/sandt/henan-hiv.htm Hunter, S. (2005). AIDS in Asia: A Continent in Peril, New York: Palgrave Macmillan Kam Tsang (2003). Blood Plasma Economy Accelerates AIDS Crisis in China. Retrieved from http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=5009fd4424 33b459f7b6ab09fe890e4a Rosenthal, E. et al. (March 27, 2003). China Raises Tally of Cases and Deaths in Mystery Illness. The New York Times. Retrieved from. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/world/china-raises-tally-of-cases-and- deaths-in-mystery-illness.htm UNAIDS (2002).HIV/AIDS: China’s Titanic Peril. Retrieved from www.unaids.org/whatsnew/newadds/AIDSChina2001update.pdf, 26 March 2003. Wang, Y. (2000). A Strategy of Clinical Tolerance for the Prevention of HIV andAIDS in China. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. 25(1):48. Wang, Y. et al. (2010).China AIDS policy implementation: reversing the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2015. International Journal of Epidemiology.39 (2): ii1-ii3. Yangzhong, H. (2005).The politics of HIV/AIDS in China. Center for global health studies. Retrieved from http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/phrhcs/conference/hivpolitics.pdf Zhao, X. (2005). China's Plasma Economy. Caijing Magazine. Retrieved from http://english.caijing.com.cn/2005-05-02/100013788.html Read More