Wang Zhe, deputy director of Henan Province's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, led us on a tour of three different rural villages in which many people had become infected by selling blood. Here, Wang inspects a box containing the anti-HIV medicine ddI in the home of an infected woman whom the government hired to help run a directly observed therapy program to improve people's adherence to their treatment regimens. Wang said he was not surprised that so many former donors had dropped out of the free treatment program that the government suddenly launched in 2003. "It's natural when you use drugs on so many people in such a short time and you don't have doctors at a high level," said Wang. "And it needs time for them to realize these antivirals are to save their lives." |
