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China’s ‘blood famine’ drives patients to the black market

By Alexandra Harney SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s rising demand for healthcare is exposing a chronic shortage of an essential commodity: blood. With hospital blood supplies tight, desperate patients are turning to agents known as “blood heads”, who sell certificates that give patients access to state blood banks, creating a black market at the heart of the healthcare system. “If there were no blood heads, what would I do?” The blood “famine”, as it has been dubbed, is an unintended consequence of China’s attempts to restore faith in the nation’s scandal-stained blood supply and encourage people to donate. In the late 1980s and 1990s, local officials urged farmers to sell their blood and plasma, and an earlier generation of blood heads sold this to hospitals and blood banks.