Dr. Gao Yaojie, Who Exposed AIDS Epidemic in Rural China, Dies At 95

Gao Yaojie, a renowned Chinese doctor and activist who exposed the AIDS virus epidemic in rural China in the 1990s died Sunday at the age of 95, BBC reported. Dr Gao died of natural causes in New York, where she had been in exile since 2009. Her death was confirmed by Prof. Andrew J. Nathan, a scholar of Chinese politics at Columbia University who managed her affairs in the United States.

A trained gynecologist, Dr Gao became well-known and beloved across China in the late 1990s for her relentless activism in exposing a man-made AIDS crisis and for her work to remove the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. She discovered that AIDS was spreading through ramshackle blood transfusion centers set up with official government backing. 

She spoke against blood-selling schemes that infected thousands with HIV, mainly in her home province of Henan in central China. Dr. Gao traveled across the country treating patients, often at her own expense. She reportedly visited more than 100 "Aids villages" and met more than 1,000 families offering them food, clothes, and medicine. Her work also received recognition from international organizations and officials.

''AIDS not only killed individuals but destroyed countless families. This was a man-made catastrophe. Yet the people responsible for it have never been brought to account, nor have they uttered a single word of apology,'' Dr. Gao said in an interview with The New York Times in 2016.

However, her outspokenness about the virus outbreak embarrassed the Chinese government and officials repeatedly tried to prevent her from travelling abroad, where she was being celebrated for her work. In 2007, she was briefly put under house arrest to prevent her from traveling to the United States to pick up a prize recognizing her work in women's health.

She left China in 2009, in the face of surveillance and growing pressure from the local government, and settled in Manhattan, New York. Her husband Guo Mingjiu died in 2006. She is survived by two daughters and a son.

Her ashes are set to be scattered on the Yellow River in Henan, symbolising her connection to her homeland.