Washington, DC – A dissident doctor who became China’s most outspoken and celebrated AIDS campaigner, spending years under government pressure before finding refuge in the United States, has died at the age of 95, a long-time supporter told AFP.
Gao Yaojie, who dedicated her retirement to helping AIDS patients and orphans, passed away in New York City on Sunday, Andrew Nathan, a prominent China expert who managed her affairs in the United States, confirmed.
“She had been frail for several years and spent all but a few minutes a day in bed,” he told AFP, but added that her health had been stable and her death was “sudden and unexpected.”
She died at home on International Human Rights Day, said Nathan, who is a political scientist at Columbia University.
Gao moved to New York in 2009 after years of harassment by Chinese officials believed to be nursing grudges after she exposed a cover-up of the true extent of the AIDS epidemic in central Henan province.
She was among the first doctors to hear about the mysterious disease that was killing villagers in the mid-1990s, and realized huge numbers of poor farmers had contracted AIDS or HIV by selling blood in unsanitary government-approved collection schemes begun a decade earlier.
As the local authorities tried to keep the scandal quiet and refused to give any help to the villagers, Gao began buying basic medicine and supplies using her pension to help the sick.
Experts estimate at least one million farmers in Henan alone contracted HIV/AIDS in the blood trade.
Gao became one of the most vocal campaigners in publicizing the plight of the AIDS sufferers, and received international recognition for her work, though for years authorities refused to issue her a passport and often put her under surveillance. AFP