Source: Picasa/PR By: Saira Canales China tends to be a very conservative country making it very hard to openly say what you believe, since it is not very well accepted by society. So admitting to an HIV outbreak was very difficult to recognize and take action on. Dr. Shuping Wang was the first person to take note that there was something wrong with the blood she was testing. There was severe levels of hepatitis C and HIV. This began in Central China. The more blood she would test, the more contaminated blood she found. Eventually she came to the conclusion that she would have to go to the public about this because the situation did nothing but get worse. When she first came forward on the issue, no one took her seriously and she was looked down upon. As previously stated, China tends to be very conservative, so you can imagine the backlash she got for this. She has even reported that her pharmacy was trashed and lost her job in the process for making “false” accusations. Even through all of this, she still wanted to help somehow, so she would suggest, constantly, that blood donors should get themselves tested before they donated. However, they did not listen, as getting your blood tested is very expensive. She ended up paying for the tests kits and she reported that she found more than 400 donors had HIV. Dr. Shuping Wang said, “My own investigation found the hepatitis C antibody positive rate to be as high as 84.3%. Being a doctor, I was very anxious. I knew that hepatitis C and HIV had the same routes of infection ... I didn’t want to sit in the office of the Health Bureau waiting for the arrival of an AIDS epidemic. I wanted to directly monitor it and prevent it.” To this day she continues her search on the effects of HIV and on what she and others can do to help prevent it from spreading. She will not stop speaking out and she will continue this fight regardless of how many people approach her. She herself said, “The only thing harder than standing up to the government and their security police is not giving in to pressure from friends and relatives who are threatened with their livelihoods, all because you are speaking out,” she said. “But even after all this time, I will still not be silenced, even though I am deeply sad that this intimidation is happening yet again.”
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