Gao Yaojie: Dissident doctor who exposed China’s Aids epidemic, dies at 95

Gao Yaojie, a dissident doctor who exposed the Aids epidemic in rural China, has died aged 95.

Dr Gao died of natural causes in New York, where she had been on exile since 2009, a friend of hers told the BBC.

Her work uncovered how businesses selling blood led to the spread of HIV in the countryside.

She was at the forefront of Aids activism in China and travelled across the country treating patients, often at her own expense.

A gynaecologist by training, Dr Gao encountered her first AIDS patient in the central province of Henan in 1996.

With a huge population and limited industry, Henan residents sold their blood to make a living. Unsanitary conditions allowed blood tainted with HIV to spread and infect more people.

Dr Gao had claimed that 10 million people were infected with HIV in China, far greater than Beijing’s official figure of 740,000.

While Dr Gao was not the first the Chinese doctor to expose the country’s Aids epidemic, it was her work that gained the most attention at home and abroad. She also won numerous awards.

Chinese authorities were initially lenient with her but they later grew uncomfortable with her criticism of officials. She left China in 2009, in the face of surveillance and growing pressure from authorities.

Her death has been mourned by the Chinese on the internet, despite her long absence in her homeland.

“She was a great figure. But young people nowadays may not know about that history,” said one user on social media platform Weibo.

“Our generation of news workers or news readers know her and remember her. It [the news] also reminded me of other Chinese doctors’ names such as Jiang Yanyong and Li Wenliang,” said Chinese journalist Li Weiao on Weibo, referring to other whistleblowers of the Sars outbreak of 2003 and the Covid pandemic.