Health care in China
I fortunately was never in need of a doctor when I was in China. I'm sure that won't be the case in the future, just because everyone needs a doctor sometime. It isn't because I believe the system to be inferior. No one wants to end up in the hospital in a foreign country, which is why I had my gall bladder out before I went.
There's a story I've been following in the South China Morning Post for a few weeks and did not get a chance to blog about because it was my last week there. Here's an intro to the story of Chen Deping in a cached version of a Singapore news site. Chen came from Hubei to Guangzhou lured by the promise of a 1000 yuan-per-month job. She sounds like girls I met and used to see all the time around "Chicken Street." Girls that come from Shaanxi to sell flowers in the bars when they are barely fifteen. The awfully young-looking maseuses who barely look old enough to even know what would be involved in a full body oily VIP massage (heck, I'm not old enough). Most of the women and girls in the bars of Shekou, chicken or no, come from somewhere else, hoping to make more money than they can at home. Fortunately, most of these women I used to see everyday are in much better shape than Chen, though I don't doubt for one minute that stories like Chen's exist in Shekou or other parts of Shenzhen.
What you don't see in the Singapore news story is that Chen does have something of a happy ending, for now. The South China Morning Post took up her cause and readers contributed enough money for her surgery which will help her gain her life back. The hospital required her to pay 50,000 yuan upfront for her surgery, something she couldn't afford. That is around $6300. Without the pre-paid amount, no surgery.
Even in my limited exposure to China, I have heard of this happening before. In my nanny post, I mentioned an expat family whose nanny was a member of the family and due to sad circumstances, a necessary caregiver. She suffered a stroke last fall. The outlook was good, provided she was able to get life-saving surgery at the pre-paid amount of 100,000 yuan. Without it, if she lived at all, she would be in a vegetative state. The expats closest to this family kicked in what they could and helped to organize some fundraisers. She was able to have her surgery. When I first met her I had no idea she even had a stroke. I didn't hear that part of the story until later.
So I wonder about the state of the communist state of China. Health care is not guaranteed unless you can afford it. In some ways it isn't different than so many other places, but it surprised me to hear that in a supposedly communist country, health care is a luxury.
Oh, and if someone knows better than I about routine health care, not these extreme life-saving situations, I defer to you. It may be possible that routine preventive type care is more affordable and available.
There's a story I've been following in the South China Morning Post for a few weeks and did not get a chance to blog about because it was my last week there. Here's an intro to the story of Chen Deping in a cached version of a Singapore news site. Chen came from Hubei to Guangzhou lured by the promise of a 1000 yuan-per-month job. She sounds like girls I met and used to see all the time around "Chicken Street." Girls that come from Shaanxi to sell flowers in the bars when they are barely fifteen. The awfully young-looking maseuses who barely look old enough to even know what would be involved in a full body oily VIP massage (heck, I'm not old enough). Most of the women and girls in the bars of Shekou, chicken or no, come from somewhere else, hoping to make more money than they can at home. Fortunately, most of these women I used to see everyday are in much better shape than Chen, though I don't doubt for one minute that stories like Chen's exist in Shekou or other parts of Shenzhen.
What you don't see in the Singapore news story is that Chen does have something of a happy ending, for now. The South China Morning Post took up her cause and readers contributed enough money for her surgery which will help her gain her life back. The hospital required her to pay 50,000 yuan upfront for her surgery, something she couldn't afford. That is around $6300. Without the pre-paid amount, no surgery.
Even in my limited exposure to China, I have heard of this happening before. In my nanny post, I mentioned an expat family whose nanny was a member of the family and due to sad circumstances, a necessary caregiver. She suffered a stroke last fall. The outlook was good, provided she was able to get life-saving surgery at the pre-paid amount of 100,000 yuan. Without it, if she lived at all, she would be in a vegetative state. The expats closest to this family kicked in what they could and helped to organize some fundraisers. She was able to have her surgery. When I first met her I had no idea she even had a stroke. I didn't hear that part of the story until later.
So I wonder about the state of the communist state of China. Health care is not guaranteed unless you can afford it. In some ways it isn't different than so many other places, but it surprised me to hear that in a supposedly communist country, health care is a luxury.
Oh, and if someone knows better than I about routine health care, not these extreme life-saving situations, I defer to you. It may be possible that routine preventive type care is more affordable and available.
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