Fired from jobs, barred from schools, rejected romantically – for years carriers of hepatitis B in China faced a litany of humiliations, large and small. In 1992 it was estimated that about 10% of the population tested positive for the hepatitis B antigen. Yet for the next decade they were systematically barred from participating in all walks of life. That fuelled an industry in fraudulent medical reports, which is where Han Dong, the star of the film The Best is Yet to Come, starts his investigation.
The story is loosely based on the real-life Han Fudong, a journalist who went on to become chief reporter of the Southern Metropolis Daily, a newspaper that was once known for its hard-hitting investigations. Han’s work eventually led to companies being banned from screening employees for the virus or to fire carriers. At that time there were more than 120 million people living with the disease in China.
