Gao Yaojie is a Chinese gynecologist, academic, and AIDS activist in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China.
27 Facts About Gao Yaojie
2.
Gao Yaojie is living alone in uptown Manhattan, New York City.
3.
Gao Yaojie was born in Cao County, Shandong Province in 1927.
4.
Gao Yaojie graduated from the School of Medicine at Henan University in 1954.
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However, because of her intellectual background Dr Gao Yaojie was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, leaving her in ill health.
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Gao Yaojie worked as a gynecologist in the Henan Chinese Medicine Hospital in 1974, was promoted to professor in 1986, and retired in 1990.
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Dr Gao Yaojie was a member of the Henan People's Congress.
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Gao Yaojie is well known in China and worldwide for her AIDS prevention work in during the HIV epidemic in Henan, and for advocating much greater attention to people suffering from AIDS and children orphaned by AIDS.
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In 1996 Gao Yaojie started doing AIDS prevention work and treating people afflicted with AIDS in Henan's villages at her own expense.
10.
Gao Yaojie visited over 100 Henan villages and treated over 1000 people.
11.
Gao Yaojie used the $20,000 Jonathan Mann Award and $10,000 in contribution to reprint her book.
12.
For several consecutive days, Gao Yaojie had no appetite and slept poorly.
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Gao Yaojie sponsored and edited a tabloid, Knowledge of AIDS Prevention, which has published 530,000 copies in 15 issues.
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Except for the first issue, all the following issues were funded by Gao Yaojie herself, costing her 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan each.
15.
Gao Yaojie bought medicine on her own expenses for patients and sends money to them.
16.
Gao Yaojie spent all her $20,000 in award money from Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights and $10,000 in donations from the Ford Foundation in printing 150,000 copies of the book.
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Soon, Gao Yaojie received piles of letters from different places asking for the book; most of the letters came from Henan Province.
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Gao Yaojie worked alongside Shuping Wang, a health researcher that had previously called out in China's poor practices in blood collection that lead to the spread of hepatitis C in 1993, and who had been a whistleblower on the rise of HIV infection a few years later.
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Gao Yaojie's hard work and persistence have forced the government to admit that there is a problem with AIDS.
20.
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.
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Gao Yaojie was designated one of the "Ten People Who Touched China in 2003" by China Central Television.
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Gao Yaojie was reported in February, 2007 to have been held in house arrest and unable to travel.
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Gao Yaojie left China from Guangdong province after receiving a warm company from her supporters.
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The house arrest of Gao Yaojie was part of a continuing pattern of harassment, especially in Henan Province, of grassroots AIDS activists in China.
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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.
26.
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.
27.
On February 7,2015, Gao Yaojie received the 2014 annual "Liu Binyan Conscience Award".