Profiles

China's whistleblower doctor, Gui Xi'en

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-30 15:17

BEIJING: A noisy cab speeds along a dark country road on a muggy Friday night of July 2009, Dr. Gui Xi'en, 72, sits on the cramped back seat with a satchel on his shoulder and suitcase on his lap.

He is on his way to Shangcai, an AIDS-ravaged county in central China's Henan Province.

As the cab approaches the county seat, Gui directs it to a small hotel. He plans to stay the night and quietly goes to the villages on Saturday.

File photo of Gui Xi'en. [Xinhua]

Ten years after he first exposed their deadly secret in 1999, Gui who blew the whistle on China's "AIDS villages", is still sneaking into rural communities in Shangcai, offering counseling to those dying from the epidemic.

"I came secretly before, because they (local officials) were not nice to me. I still come secretly now, because they are too nice to me," says Gui.

"If they knew I were here, they would come see me and invite me for lunch or dinner. I think that is unnecessary and I don't like it."

Whistleblower

An infectious diseases specialist with Zhongnan Hospital at Wuhan University in a neighboring province Hubei, Gui first visited Wenlou, a village of Shangcai in July 1999 as a favor to a fellow doctor there.

HIV/AIDS was the last thing he expected to find. Some villagers suffered from constant fever and diarrhea. People died every month, with their bodies covered in sores and dark, wine-colored blotches. Panic had seized the village.

Gui took 11 blood samples from the villagers, and found 10 were HIV positive. He immediately informed the local health authorities and urged them to take action. But their response was to refuse him further entry to the villages.

Two months later, during a long-weekend holiday when he calculated that officials would let their guard down, he sneaked back into Wenlou with his three students. After three days of house calls, Gui returned to Wuhan with 159 blood samples. The result was shocking -- 90 of them were HIV positive.

Gui realized that he had stumbled on a full-blown AIDS epidemic, something he had only read about in medical journals.

The tragedy originally was caused by a local unchecked blood selling and collecting industry in the early 1990s.

With detailed data and analysis, Gui wrote a letter to Beijing. With the central government involved, local authorities could no longer hide the lethal infection. But they looked on Gui even more unfavorably.

On June 8, 2001, Gui went to Wenlou alone. He took medicines for the villagers. The county government sent police to expel him. Gui escaped with the help of villagers, who hid him from the police, and moved him to a safer place by motorcycle in the middle of the night.

Faced with smears and obstructions, the mild-mannered doctor wrote a letter to the county authorities in a strong tone: "One day the tragedy will be written into history and those responsible will be condemned by history."

Today the health clinics Gui visits in the AIDS villages provide free HIV testing and antiretroviral treatments, and charity homes shelter AIDS-caused orphans and the elderly whose caretakers have died of AIDS.

Nationwide, the government has been providing free antiretroviral treatments to rural HIV/AIDS patients since 2004, and to urban sufferers with financial difficulties. The government has also provided free HIV screening, free therapy to block mother-to-infant transmission, free infant HIV testing and financial assistance for children who lost their parents to the epidemic.

In the summer of 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao visited Gui at his home, and thanked him for his efforts in the epidemic prevention. In 2007 and again in 2008, Wen invited Gui to join him on visits to HIV/AIDS villages and AIDS-related orphans.