Poor farmers in southwest China are selling blood plasma for a living, despite fears collection practices could spread AIDS or other diseases.

Guizhou Province has 25 plasma collection stations, the most of any province, Nanfengchuang, a Guangdong Province magazine, reported.

Guizhou's collection stations contribute more than 1,500 tons of plasma a year -- nearly a quarter of the national capacity, the report said.

Plasma collection differs from blood donation in that, once the plasma is extracted from the blood, the red blood cells are returned to the seller.

A farmer from Huishui County said a seller can get 85 yuan (US$10.62) for 600 milliliters.

"Lots of villagers go to sell plasma, and some are couples," the farmer said.

"I hope to sell more times every month. Now we can sell twice a month at most and there must be 14 days between sales."

Local authorities require plasma sellers to produce ID cards and have banned sellers from out of town.

But many sellers use fake ID cards to flout the rules.

The owner of a restaurant near the Huishui County collection station said the station opens Monday to Saturday.

He said hundreds of people come to sell plasma every day, and there are nearly 1,000 on busy days.

A young local man explained the growth of the "plasma economy."

"We are uneducated farmers and can't find a job," he said. "If we can get out of poverty, who is not willing to sell his own blood?"

Another local said Guizhou has more mountains than farmlands. "We have few lands to plant crops," he said.

"Every year my family can reap only 150 to 200 kilograms of grain, far from enough to satisfy the family's food demand."

Selling plasma has become popular in Guizhou since the late 1990s.

In 1996, China closed all plasma collection stations in Henan Province, after several farmers were infected by HIV because of improper collection.

Henan pharmaceutical companies had to look for new sources of raw material, and the comparatively less developed regions, including Guizhou and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, became their new suppliers.

But improper practices driven by huge profits are raising concerns Guizhou could become the new Henan, the report said.

It said a collection station in Longli County replaced manual collection with a machine in 2002.

The volume taken from each seller rose to 580 milliliters from 400 milliliters but the station didn't tell the sellers and still paid each seller 75 yuan.

An investigation found the station made more than 4.5 million yuan from the racket.

But the magazine said there was no evidence anyone was punished.

(China Daily July 4, 2006)