DR. GAO YAOJIE : AIDS ACTIVIST
by Llita T. Logarta

This is the third article in a three-part series on women doctors from the roster of Magsaysay Awardees. Each of these women has done outstanding pioneering work in her field of specialty. You can also read about Dr. V. Shanta from India and Dr. Fe del Mundo from the Philippines.

Gao Yaojie is a professional. But she is first and foremost a good citizen. Long after she retired, this gynecologist continued to minister to the ailing and to promote women's health care as an educator. It was in the course of her community service that she uncovered a health crisis which the government and the medical world either were not fully aware of or were not capable of addressing.

Instead of referring the matter to her younger colleagues, she took the initiative of mounting a campaign to educate people on AIDS, starting in the rural Chinese province of Henan, where she first encountered it. As a doctor, she could not in conscience keep silent and pretend the epidemic did not exist.

So she did what a doctor should do, what any citizen would do for the country and the people. She informed the public about AIDS and advised them what to do to prevent it. In the fall of 1996, at her own expense and with contributions from sympathizers amounting to less than US$200, she wrote and produced leaflets and brochures on AIDS prevention and distributed these in railway and bus stations, public squares and crowded streets.

Learning that AIDS cases were more prevalent in the countryside than in the cities, she was determined more than ever, "to write, to edit, to print and to speak out!" By whatever means, she vowed to give the people the knowledge they needed, using her pension fund and fees from her lectures, which she gave at a rate of 30 to 70 a year.

Considering that she is in her 80s and that she has an ailing husband, Dr. Gui Mingjiu, to look after, Dr. Gao Yaojie's drive and determination are remarkable. Her book, My AIDS Prevention Journey, written in 2001, details the frustrations and heartbreaks of her odyssey. Equating AIDS with immoral behavior, the ignorant berated her, insulted her, drove her away. But she persevered, making the rounds of villages to visit the AIDS-stricken, document their cases, and give them medicine, sometimes even money.

"I know that I am just flipping spoonsful of water onto a roaring fire," she said in her book. "What I really hope I am doing is moving people with conscience (to) sympathize with people with AIDS (and) treat them well. The orphans, especially, need help."

She met her first AIDS patient in a Henan hospital in April 1996. A specialist in ovarian gynecology and already retired from the Henan College of Traditional Medicine, she diagnosed the 40-year-old woman's deadly disease and traced it to a blood transfusion. She quickly realized that people, including doctors, knew very little about HIV/AIDS, much less how to arrest its spread. As she discovered later, poor farmers in Henan had fallen prey to a thriving blood trade, carried out under unhygienic conditions. She also found out that AIDS was ravaging the Henan countryside. People were dying, leaving increasing numbers of AIDS orphans, because of ignorance and the government's refusal to acknowledge the problem.

Her crusade had brought her to situations unthinkable for a woman her age. She and her volunteer assistants would go to night clubs to give AIDS materials, and the bar girls would drive them away as though they themselves had brought the plague. "Old lady, get out of here! If the customers see this, no one will dare come here. They'll all think we have HIV," she recalled one woman as saying before the club manager kicked them out.

Her heart broke when she saw a child crying for his mother to "come down," when in fact the woman had been hanging from a beam in the ceiling, lifeless. Dr. Gao learned that the woman was HIV-positive and that her husband had just died of AIDS.

While her assistants continue to scour the villages, for research, documentation, assistance, Dr. Gao continues to write books. Her two most recent works are The Investigation of AIDS in China, published in May 2005, and Ten Years of Preventing AIDS, published in April 2005. Both have a positive influence on Chinese society. Also popular is another book, 10,000 Letters, a selection of 200 letters seeking information and consultation.

She thanks journalists, both local and international, for helping her bring the Henan disaster to world attention. "With their stories, more and more people are aware of the AIDS crisis in China," she says. And she thanks her husband and children "who have given me much support these past years. Without their support and sacrifice my work could not be done."

It took over a decade of struggle, untold hardships and harassment from all sides before she managed to turn the tide of official indifference and public rejection. But the battle is far from over. As recent as February 2007, she was placed under house arrest and forbidden to travel to the U.S. to receive an award from a non-profit group that promotes women empowerment.

The government, however, later lifted its restrictions. She is now allowed to speak at medical conferences and be written about in Chinese media, an indication that the government is relaxing its official position on the AIDS issue. Says Gao, "I think it's a sign of the progress our society has made. Ten years ago this could not have happened."

The world has been quicker to recognize Gao's selfless efforts to enlighten and help her countrymen. In 2003, she was chosen to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, but was forbidden to travel to the Philippines. She was allowed to leave China only in August of 2007, the same year she received a Leadership Award from the U.S.-based Vital Voices Partnership, of which Senator Hillary Clinton is honorary co-chair. TIME magazine named her among Asia's Heroes and the International Herald Tribune hails her as "among the handful of advocates whose work is credited with helping force the Chinese government to confront the spread of AIDS."

Dr. Gao Yaojie will have to continue flipping spoonsful of water before the AIDS threat is under control.