Each country's situation is characterized under one term yet, the actuality of the nature of blood smuggling is hugely various.
Three decades of the policy “changed Chinese childbearing attitudes,” said Fuxian Yi, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People have changed their reproductive habits, psychology and behaviour. Having just one child or no children has become the social norm..” Due to traditional views many Chinese couples see it as preferable to have a boy as their one child; however, Chinese government have illegalized sex determination in attempts to prevent gender abortions and level the discrepancy between the female and male population. Therefore, many pregnant women opt to put their blood into a test tube, label it and pay another to smuggle it into Hong Kong in an attempt to find out if they should abort the child due to gender or possible genetic irregularity. It is usually children posing as students that smuggle hundreds of blood samples across the border per day, for pay.
In India, blood smuggling poses a more imminent and dangerous threat. Blood is in chronic short supply in India, with a 25% deficit in the amount of blood India needs. In the summer this shortfall hits 50%, leading to a spurt in professional donors cashing in on the needs of desperate patients. Some have found ways to capitalise on the dire need for blood in India – forming blood farms. The victims, all poor migrants, were lured to a house on the pretext of being given jobs and were then convinced to sell their blood "Initially, they did it willingly," says Neha Dixit, who covered the story for Tehelka magazine. "But when I met Hari Kamat (a man freed from a blood farm in Nepal) in the hospital recuperating, he said that after a while, they became too weak to resist and when they had the energy to try and escape, they were beaten and locked up."
Blood smuggling. An unfortunate reality that plagues two of the largest Asian countries; one simply inhumane and the other robbing families of a choice. Both situations that leak into the reality of our overpopulated world.
Zarah
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