The man in the photo was weighing a boy in a bucket with an out-of-date scale. Due to a lack of medical resources, this is the only way villagers in the Abuluoha village in a mountainous region of Sichuan Province, where this photo was taken, can find out whether the children are healthy.
The Abuluoha village is about 100 people in size, and is made up of leprosy patients and their offspring. In the old days, when Hansen's disease (leprosy) was untreatable, these patients could only live in isolated villages. Today, the offspring of these people are still being discriminated against by locals, even though they don't carry the disease themselves.
This photo has had some ripple effects. Tencent's charity republished the photo on its website, and as a result a donation was started to buy raincoats for the local elementary school students. To me, that's photography at its best. Photo: Li Hao/GT