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Following the first HIV/AIDS case in 1986, four haemophiliacs from Zhejiang province discovered that they were infected with HIV/AIDS due to contaminated blood in an imported blood coagulation factor from a foreign blood supply. In 1989, the Yunnan Ministry of Health found that 147 men at the border of Burma and China were HIV positive. By 2004, the number of reported HIV cases was approximately 107,000. 3

From 1995 onwards, the growth of “AIDS villages”, which developed due to contaminated blood supplies, caused the HIV/AIDS epidemic to increase over large areas of rural central China. 4 Consequently, many farmers, women and children already living in poverty became infected with HIV/AIDS. The source of women’s infection was primarily medical operations, for example during gynaecological operations or during childbirth, and their husbands who sold blood in blood stations or received blood in hospitals. Children frequently became infected through their parents and mortality due to infection was initially high. This was often the first point at which family members realised that they had been affected by HIV/AIDS. The effects of a parent suffering from HIV/AIDS compounded the suffering of their children who often became orphans and experienced increased poverty and hardship.