Officials detain
six over China blood-selling scheme

Officials detained six people involved in a blood-selling scheme in southern China, cracking down on the illegal practice that helped spread AIDS in the country, news reports said Friday.

More than 100 police officers took part in a raid in Jieyang City in southern Guangdong province Wednesday evening, detaining the blood-selling scheme's leader and five sellers, said an official Xinhua News Agency report posted on the Jieyang government's Web site.

The report said Guangdong's vice health minister, Liao Xinbo, led a team to Jieyang to investigate the incident.

Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po newspaper said that the Jieyang government ordered officials to donate blood to avoid depleting the city's blood supply after the raid.

Blood-selling schemes helped spread AIDS in China in the 1990s.

Operators used dirty needles, and people selling plasma, the liquid in blood, were replenished from a pooled blood supply that was contaminated with HIV.

The Chinese government and the United Nations say China's tainted blood problem had been largely brought under control.

Last year, only about 5% of new reported HIV infections were blamed on tainted transfusions or on blood-selling, which has been banned, the health ministry says.

It was not immediately clear if the suspects detained in Jieyang were tested for HIV.

Calls to the Guangdong health ministry and to Jieyang's government and police offices went unanswered Friday.

The Xinhua report said this most recently discovered blood-selling plan was first exposed by the Chinese newspaper Information Times in a Wednesday report.

The report said blood sellers numbered in the hundreds, and thousands of U.S. dollars were made each month.

It said sellers took medication that allowed them to sell blood frequently, with some selling their blood as often as 16 times a month. The newspaper also ran a photo showing dozens identified as lining up to sell blood. (AP)