Blood Money: Why Blood Transfusions Are So Dirty in China

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

04/27/2010

Blood Money: Why Blood Transfusions Are So Dirty in China

During the 1980s, in the United States, Canada, Japan and France thousands of people who underwent blood transfusions were infected with the HIV/AIDS virus. Subsequent national investigations into these scandals revealed that blood collection agencies were under-regulated and ripe with corruption. After approximately five years, increases in government oversight of these agencies and improved blood collection processes eliminated HIV/AIDS contaminated blood stores in these countries.
China’s tainted blood supply problem has proved harder to tame. It’s first tainted blood scandals occurred in the mid-1990s, and just last week Zhao Minggang, a top official at China’s Ministry of Health warned that blood transfusions are still dangerous in China and should be avoided whenever possible.
Read more at Asia Healthcare Blog

Apr 27, 2010 2:29:27 PM | Current Affairs, Medicine

1 Comment

We know anybody who has received a blood transfusion whilst having surgery or as part of their medical treatment, also runs the risk of being the recipient of a contaminated blood transfusion.The most common form of contamination is hepatitis C. Although it is a disease which attacks the liver, early symptoms appear in the form of a cold or flu. These symptoms come and go over the years, and you may think nothing of them until damage to the liver is discovered – even then, the symptoms may appear similar to cancer, cirrhosis or liver failure.

Posted by: Contaminated blood compensation claim | 10/25/2010 at 02:00 AM

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