Wrong blood, wrong place, wrong time
- Source: Global Times
- [22:42 January 07 2010]
- Comments
By Yin Hang
Hemophiliacs and their families who are petitioning Sinopharm are interviewed at a hotel in Zhichun Lu, Beijing, on December 30. Photo: Zhang Shihe
While the big city victims of a tainted blood scandal collect their monthly compensation package, a hemophiliac from the wrong region of China and his two debt-ridden, laid-off parents remain abandoned not just by the largest pharmaceutical company in China, but also the legal system and their few remaining hometown friends and relatives.
After allegedly receiving a tainted blood agent manufactured by Shanghai Institute of Biological Products, the then 11-year-old boy was diagnosed in 2000 as HIV positive and a Hepatitis C carrier.
His Heilongjiang Province family filed a lawsuit over the infected Factor 8 clotting component in June 2003 at Changning district court in Shanghai.
Ten months later, the court rejected the case it had previously accepted, stating that the plantiff failed to provide surficient evidence and an HIV virus infection might have come through any one of multiple channels, according to Wang Lei, the father of the boy. The Harbin HIV patient should go seek compensation elsewhere, the court ordered.
"There is no direct relation between the fact that hemophilia patients were contaminated with AIDS and the fact that the patients have ever used a medicine product by the company," Wang Panshi, director of the Division of Health Inspection at the Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau, reportedly told the Agence France-Presse.
"If I went out and got a cold, who will shoulder the responsibility for my cold?"
The cold logic that worked for rural and impoverished out-of-towners was not forthcoming in the case of Shanghai victims. Shanghai-based hemophiliacs each had their medical expenses reimbursed, 100,000 yuan in compensation plus a 1,000-yuan monthly living subsidy, according to a Shanghai Daily report on November 27, 2003.
After further court failures in his home city of Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang, Wang and his peers have trudged thousands of miles down the many and various hopeless petitioning bureau lines of China. One out of every 500 petitioners, or 0.2 percent, have their problem actually solved, according to Yu Jianrong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in his 2004 report The Deficiency of Petition System and its Political Consequences.
4.9 billion yuan
Eight years of struggle with the Shanghai Institute of Biological Products and its parent pharmaceutical company of Sinopharm has not paid off. By contrast, Hong Kong-listed Sinopharm – the China National Pharmaceutical Group Corporation – reportedly earned 4.9 billion yuan in 2008. Its revenue in 2007 reached 35 billion yuan.
"We started defending our rights in 2002," Wang said. "Over the last eight years, we have not enjoyed a single moment's success."
Their most recent and spectacular failure occurred on December 30 when Wang and 20 other hemophiliacs and their relatives gathered at the Beijing headquarters of Sinopharm petitioning for a compensation package for the 15-year-old blood contamination scandal.
Wrong blood, wrong place, wrong time
- Source: Global Times
- [22:42 January 07 2010]
- Comments
The Shanghai Institute of Biological Products Factor VIII-related Antigen (Factor 8) is alleged to have infected customers with AIDS, Hepatitis B or C. State health authorities issued an emergency notice in 1995 banning the product. Photo: Southern Metropolis Daily
They asked for about 1,000 yuan as sundry living expenses and also hotel fees from a month's petitioning in Beijing, plus six units of Factor 8 blood agent.
They also pleaded for the company to finally address the overall compensation issue, according to an earlier report of the Global Times.
China's largest drug distributor did not turn them down flat. After three rounds of negotiations, Sinopharm agreed to offer each patient 8,000 yuan "consolation money" and paid their Beijing hotel bills. The petitioners were reminded that the company will make no more payments and accept no more petitions.
One of the most heavily-traded stocks in Hong Kong, Sinopharm's shares rose more than 9 percent to an all-time high of HK$31.5 on Tuesday. Their corporate slogan in Chinese is "Care about life. Care for health."
"They treated us with a bad attitude," Wang said. "They refused to admit their mistakes and they have no willingness to solve our problems."
Wang Lifeng, newly appointed Party chief of Sinopharm, could not be reached for comment and her mobile phone went unanswered Monday. Wang in an earlier report told the Global Times she was not at the helm at the time.
"The Factor 8 incident is historical and complicated," she said. "I just can't make an official statement right now."
She suggested the reporter cover the story after an agreement was reached with the petitioners.
It's hard to come up with a way to help them, said Beijing lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan who met the family in February last year at a hemophiliac rights protection meeting.
"The family's story is a tragedy," he said. "Eight years of defending their rights, they got nothing as compensation. The court in Shanghai didn't accept their case. I have no idea what else they can do."
Wang Lei borrowed most of the more-than-200,000 yuan medical expenses from his relatives. As he and his wife were laid off in 1997, the family has been relying on 340 yuan low-income family allowance from the Harbin government.
"There's no further treatment. My kid's level of transaminase [an enzyme] is high. But we don't have enough money to use antiviral medicine, essential for treating his Hepatitis C," he said.
"We can only afford some medicines to control his transaminase level. We don't have any medicine so we told him to hold on and drink more water to cure his kidney problem."
Wrong blood, wrong place, wrong time
- Source: Global Times
- [22:42 January 07 2010]
- Comments
After he was diagnosed HIV positive and a Hepatitis C carrier, the son – whose father requested anonymity for him –received more and more medicine.
"That meant more chances of internal bleeding," Wang Lei said. "His kidney bled twice last month."
Wang has been deserted by all his hometown friends and neighbors.
"After the AIDS information spread about, my family became distanced from fearful neighbors and relatives in my hometown. My kid dropped out of school and in 2000 stay at home depressed and hopeless all day."
Zhang Shihe, a citizen journalist who has followed the family's pointless petitioning attempts in Beijing, said he pitied the family.
"They've been dropped off the world. Who cares for them?" he told the Global Times.
"In their hometown they are feared by their neighbors. They have to move from place to place and leave that place before their new neighbors start to be disgusted by them."
Wang asked the Global Times to express his thanks to all the warmhearted people who have helped them.
"Doctors in the Beijing You'an Hospital didn't charge a registration fee and treated us for free. I really want to thank them – they are really kind-hearted people," Wang said.
"We are not discarded by society after all."
As Saturday's snow blanketed Beijing and dragged temperatures below -15 C, the family stepped on a train back to their northwestern hometown, where -30 C temperatures awaited.
Wrong blood, wrong place, wrong time
- Source: Global Times
- [22:42 January 07 2010]
- Comments
Fast facts: tainted blood products
About 1,000-2,000 hemophiliacs are HIV-positive as a result of infection through the batch of banned blood products, said Kong Delin, deputy director of the Shanghai-based Hemophilia Home of China.
"But due to the fact many patients died during the last 20 years, it's hard to provide a precise number of how many people are infected," Kong said.
China has about 130,000 hemophiliacs according to the report The Situation Regarding Hemophiliacs Infected with HIV/HCV in China issued by the Love Knowledge Action Research Institute on October 2006.
The report quoted an anonymous director of the Shanghai Institute of Biological Products who said of more than 10,000 clients who had used their Factor 8 products, 108 hemophiliacs were found infected with the HIV.
Manufactured in 1995, the Shanghai Institute of Biological Products Factor VIII-related Antigen (Factor 8) was alleged to have caused AIDS, Hepatitis B or C. State health authorities issued an emergency notice to ban such products nationwide the same year.
Three years later, 64 hemophiliacs in the Shanghai region were infected with HIV after receiving transmissions of clotting factor VIII produced by the Shanghai Institute of Biological Products and four died of complications related to AIDS that year, according to the report.
Since 2000, this group of hemophiliacs has attempted to obtain compensation from Shanghai Institute of Biological Products. Initially, courts refused to hear their cases and both the company and municipal health officials have continually denied any responsibility, the report alleged.
A Shanghai court in 2002 ordered the establishment of a compensation fund for the Shanghai hemophiliacs. However, Shanghai Institute of Biological Products was still not held responsible, and the compensation fund only applied to hemophiliacs living within Shanghai city proper.
The Ministry of Health issued no. 162 document in December 2003 requiring local government to provide living assistance and free treatment to infected patients.
Fast facts: Tainted blood solutions
In the 1980s, thousands of people in the US, Japan, France and Canada contracted HIV/AIDS through contaminated blood supplies. Governments and courts were burdened by a torrent of litigation. China now faces a similar challenge.
Based on experiences accumulated through dealing with these issues, Asia Catalyst, a non-governmental organization based in New York, raised some suggestions for China. Their recommendations were as follows:
International assistance
China seek and be given international technical and financial assistance in addressing its continuing blood safety issues and in compensating victims.
Control of the blood supply
China should develop a more centralized and robust regulatory system to regulate the national blood supply.
The World Health Organization, as well as US, Canadian, Japanese and French governments, and international hemophilia and HIV/AIDS organizations should all expand existing programs or initiate new ones to provide technical assistance to China in its efforts to perfect its blood safety systems.
Compensation
China's State Council AIDS and STD Prevention Coordinating Committee should establish a national compensation fund for people infected with HIV both directly and indirectly through blood sales and hospital blood transfusions (indirect victims are those who contracted HIV/AIDS from a spouse or parent who contracted HIV/AIDS from the blood supply).
The fund should provide a monthly stipend, support for families once a wage-earner dies due to complications related to AIDS, payment for funeral expenses, psychological counseling and a fund to assist affected families with educational costs.
Access to justice
The Ministry of Justice should immediately issue a circular instructing all courts in the country to accept lawsuits on HIV transmission through blood transfusions. If a victim chooses not to accept money from the national compensation fund, he or she should still have the right to bring a lawsuit and have it duly processed. While a compensation fund might release the government from liability, private actors should be subject to lawsuits under Chinese law.
Assessment
To assess the blood supply problem, members of the UN Theme Group on HIV/AIDS in China should consider convening an international conference in Beijing to offer assistance to the Chinese Ministry of Health in conducting an internal assessment of the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS through blood sales and blood transfusions.
NGOs
UNAIDS should establish an association of domestic groups that would allow them to advocate in China under the protection of the United Nations.
Source: Asia Catalyst Research Report: Aids Blood Scandals: What China can learn from the World's Mistakes, issued on September 2007
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