34 Facts About Gao Yaojie

Gao Yaojie was a Chinese gynecologist, academic, and AIDS activist based in Zhengzhou, Henan, China.

Gao Yaojie was born in Cao County, Shandong in 1927 to landowner parents.

Gao Yaojie's family, including her five siblings, moved to Kaifeng, Henan during World War II, where she attended university to study medicine beginning in 1939.

When famines began to impact the province in the late 1950s, Gao Yaojie gave food ration tickets and other supplies to patients in need.

Gao Yaojie was beaten multiple times by Red Guards because of her family's "landlord" status.

Gao Yaojie worked as a gynecologist at the Henan Chinese Medicine Hospital in 1974, was promoted to professor in 1986, and retired in 1990.

Gao Yaojie was a member of the Seventh Henan People's Congress.

Gao Yaojie became well known in China and worldwide as an advocate for AIDS prevention during the HIV epidemic in the Henan province, as well as her calls on local and national institutions for more attention to people suffering from the disease and children who had been left orphaned after the death of infected parents.

Gao Yaojie first encountered an AIDS patient in 1996, when she was called to consult for a Zhengzhou hospital.

On 7 April 1996, Gao Yaojie diagnosed Ba with AIDS following a blood test.

Gao Yaojie suspected that Ba had been infected with HIV due to a blood transfusion several years earlier during an operation on a uterine tumor.

Gao Yaojie began visiting rural villages to determine whether Ba had been an isolated case; however, it turned out there were many more cases.

Gao Yaojie handed out the newsletter at bus stations in Zhengzhou, requesting that passengers bring the newsletter to their destinations in the countryside.

In some cases, other newspapers and magazines worked with Gao Yaojie to distribute her materials alongside their publications.

Gao Yaojie donated around 60,000 copies of the book to the Women's Federation of Henan Province, as well as Henan's epidemic prevention station and provincial library, with instructions to further disseminate the books to more rural areas and to smaller organizations.

Gao Yaojie later received requests for the book, primarily from Henan, but from Hainan, Hubei, Guangdong, Yunnan and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Gao Yaojie sent patients money, and brought patients medicines, such as painkillers, to treat their symptoms.

Gao Yaojie sent and used so much of her own funds that, beginning in 2000, her husband prevented her from managing the couple's savings.

Gao Yaojie worked alongside Shuping Wang, a health researcher that had previously called out China's poor practices in blood collection that led to the spread of hepatitis C in 1993, and who had been a whistleblower on the rise of HIV infection a few years later.

Gao Yaojie was initially tolerated by local officials, but later received more backlash for her "blunt talk and harsh words".

Gao Yaojie was ordered by local authorities to not speak to journalists again.

In 2007, Chinese health officials estimated that only 740,000 adults were infected with HIV; however, three years later, Gao Yaojie estimated that the total number of cases across the nation was close to 10 million.

In 2001, Gao Yaojie was awarded the Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights, In 2002, she was named Time Magazine's Asian Heroine.

Gao Yaojie was designated one of the "Ten People Who Touched China in 2003" by China Central Television.

On 7 February 2015, Gao Yaojie received the 2014 annual "Liu Binyan Conscience Award".

The couple had two daughters and a son, whom Gao Yaojie was estranged from by 2009.

In February 2007, Gao Yaojie was reported to be under house arrest and unable to travel.

Gao Yaojie had been pressured by local officials to sign a statement that she is "unable to travel due to poor health".

The house arrest of Gao Yaojie was part of a continuing pattern of harassment, especially in Henan Province, of grassroots AIDS activists in China.

Gao Yaojie wrote that the attacks began after she began describing many cases of people continuing to contract HIV through blood transfusions in Henan Province.

In July 2008, Gao's autobiography The Soul of Gao Yaojie was published by Ming Pao Publications Limited, and the English version, The Soul of Gao Yaojie: A Memoir, was published in November 2011.

In May 2009, Gao Yaojie fled to the United States, after fearing she would be placed under house arrest again.

Gao Yaojie worked closely with Columbia University professor Andrew J Nathan, a scholar of Chinese politics who managed her affairs in the United States.

Gao Yaojie died of natural causes at her residence in Upper Manhattan on 10 December 2023, at age 95.