Hospitals In China Find Profit In AIDS

"The director said, 'You have to stay because your disease is really dangerous, and if you leave you'll be dead in three months,' " Cai said.

She borrowed money from her aunt and stayed. Twenty days later, those funds were depleted. She contacted her mother in Taiwan, who wired her more money.

No one on the hospital staff mentioned the free anti-retroviral drugs, she said. She heard about them from visiting Red Cross volunteers. They were a salve for her thoughts, now centered on suicide.

"They said, 'This is not as severe as you think,' " Cai recalled. " 'It's treatable. It's not that horrible.' " They told her to press for free drugs. The director of the AIDS ward shooed them away, she said.

Two of the patients in her room were taking anti-retroviral drugs. One, a wealthy woman, was paying $500 per month. The other, a teacher, bribed a doctor for the free drugs, said Cai. "I heard her talk about it on the phone," she said.

Someone in the ward circulated a petition calling for free drugs and more information. Cai signed. They sent it to the provincial governor. They never heard back.

In early June, an official from the Ministry of Health visited the hospital from Beijing. For the first time, a room set up as a social center for AIDS patients was opened, the door frame decorated with red hearts. She and the other patients hoped to speak with the official to complain, but the ward director picked one patient to meet with the visitor. The rest were locked inside the ward, she said.

On June 23, the doctors said she could have the free drugs. They said nothing about side effects, she recalled. They sent her to the pharmacy with a prescription for a month's supply. She returned with three bottles of pills and no instructions on how to use them.

"The doctors said you have to decide how to take them for yourself," Cai said. "I was very confused." The volunteers tracked down information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By the middle of July, Cai had exhausted her funds but still owed the hospital nearly $400. They sent her away. She moved in with another AIDS patient, a security guard who earns about $60 a month. They took an apartment near the Kunming train station, a notorious den of pickpockets. She cannot work, she said, due to side effects from the drugs, including sleeplessness and nausea. So they live on his income, scrounging for cheap, half-rotten vegetables at a local market.

In late July and again in August, she went back to the hospital to refill her prescription. They gave her another supply after she paid $18 for tests. Both times, the AIDS ward director lectured her about the need to pay her bill.

In late September, she went back for a third refill. This time, it was $60 worth of tests or no pills. She did not have it.

So, as the month drew to a close, Cai nervously inspected her plastic pill box, each day bringing her closer to the end of her supply. Each day, wondering how she would get more pills. Wondering what would happen to her body without them.

Special correspondent Eva Woo contributed to this report.