Seven bewildered and seriously ill peasants from an AIDS-stricken village in central China recently arrived in Beijing to tell a horror story to the world.
Looking bedraggled and lost, it was the first visit to the capital for the four adults and three children. A press conference was organised for the AIDS pilgrims by the Foreign Correspondents Club, but when they faced scores of reporters, photographers, and TV cameras they got nervous.
Eventually, the group agreed to do a pooled interview with a small number of journalists. They did not want to be identified nor have their pictures taken.
The story the peasants told was horrifying and confirmed reports in the last year of a Chinese AIDS scandal on a scale that is hard to comprehend.
The peasants came from Wenlou village in Henan Province. They all had the AIDS virus and two of the boys had lost both parents to the deadly disease.
They told how whole villages in Henan contracted HIV after selling their blood to government-owned blood stations in the 1990s. Hundreds of people had already died of AIDS, they claimed, with thousands of others dying of the dreaded virus.
Here is how the tragedy began. Peasants were encouraged to donate their blood for the equivalent of £4 per pint of blood. They used the money to pay their children's school fees and to cover local taxes.
The peasants became infected after the blood was taken, channelled through dirty pumps and mixed with the blood of others in a large tub.
After the plasma was extracted, the remaining blood was pumped back into the donor's veins to prevent anemia. The people who controlled these operations were known as "blood heads".
Because they didn't lose red blood cells, infected peasants continued to sell blood, further spreading HIV.
This resulted in HIV infection rates of between 65 and 80 per cent. Infected peasants passed it onto their spouses and children too.
Official blood donations were presented to Henan peasants as a way out of poverty. China's most populous province is also one of the poorest.
Some 80 per cent of the 90 million Henan people are farmers who make their living by working in the fields.
Chinese medical researchers estimate that more than 80 per cent of the residents in Wenlou and other villages in Henan have HIV, and that more than 60 per cent are already suffering full-blown aids.
Official figures show that at the end of March this year, China had 23,905 reported HIV/AIDS cases. However experts from the Health Ministry admit the real number could be more than 600,000. And the UN warns that China will have 10 million or more HIV/AIDS sufferers by 2010 unless decisive action is taken.
Instead of sounding the alarm bells in Henan, local health officials did their best to cover up the epidemic, with claims they lied and bullied to preserve secrecy. It is alleged they went as far as preventing high-level officials from the central Ministry of Health from getting a real picture of the tragedy.
The few medical researchers who dared make public their findings about the hidden AIDS epidemic were also silenced.
China banned one Henan AIDS expert, Dr Gao Yaojie, from travelling to the US in May to receive the Jonathan Mann award for her campaign to spread AIDS awareness and to bring help to the suffering.
In the past AIDS activists have had pamphlets confiscated. Chinese reporters have been warned off the story and health officials have detained foreign journalists visiting Wenlou in order to keep the scandal under wraps.
Some Chinese press reports claim that more than one million people in Henan province alone sold their blood in the 1990s, while the practice of paid blood donations also spread to neighbouring provinces.
The peasant group who made the brave trip to Beijing to highlight the scandal placed themselves at risk in order to appeal for medical care and for justice against the blood collectors they held responsible for them getting the disease.
One woman said: "We don't have any hope, we don't have any money or medicine, we are waiting to die."
But the decision by the group to expose the scandal to the world seems to have paid off. It appears central government has decided it can no longer ignore the scandal, and is finally taking notice of AIDS.
The Chinese Government has at last announced the establishment of an AIDS task-force in Wenlou and the opening of a 24-hour clinic to provide free medical care to the community.
It is also to initiate a new AIDS prevention and control plan and has pledged to give almost £100 million to establish 250 new blood collection and screening centres around China. £10 million a year has been committed towards improving public education and treatment.
They hope the plan, which also involves a crackdown on the so-called "blood-heads", will lower the growth rate of annual infections from 30 to 10 per cent.
Unfortunately it is too late for thousands in Wenlou village and Henan. One man who travelled to Beijing to expose the scandal found out three years ago he was sick with AIDS.
He said: "I am 36. I have three kids. My wife is dying. My question is who will be responsible for this?" That is a question that thousands more like him in Henan province and further afield are now asking.