PU BAOZHEN sold her house and car and moved to Beijing to seek treatment for aplastic anaemia, a rare blood disease. In early February, just minutes into her first session of chemotherapy, the hospital pulled the plug. Writing on Weibo, a Chinese social-media site, Ms Pu says doctors were worried that they would not have enough blood to support her through a gruelling bone-marrow transplant. A sudden change to the city’s blood-donation rules had given them a fright.
Blood shortages are common in China—particularly around Spring Festival, when lots of potential donors leave the cities to holiday in their hometowns. Only about 1% of Chinese give blood each year, slightly below what might be expected given its level of development (see chart). Some people worry that even a modest loss of blood is unhealthy, and no one has forgotten a grim scandal that began in the 1980s, when middlemen paying for blood infected hundreds of thousands with HIV.
Paying people to give blood was outlawed in 1998. Instead, to encourage donations, the...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/2IIXdqo
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