China’s exorbitant health care fees spark suicides

A Chinese security guard hailed as a hero for fighting off a purse snatcher jumped to his death from a 19th-storey hospital window because he couldn’t afford treatment, epitomizing the failure of China’s health care reforms.

The suicide, reported by state media, was not an isolated case. A 42-year-old farmer too poor to afford treatment for Lung Cancer set off a home-made bomb aboard a bus in Fuzhou, capital of the southeastern province of Fujian, on August 8 in a suicide attack that killed another passenger and wounded 30.

A widening wealth gap has sparked an increasing number of protests and suicides and threatens to jeopardize Communist Party chief Hu Jintao’s vow to create a “harmonious society.”

Suicide is the act of taking one’s own life on purpose. Suicidal behavior can range from thoughts of killing oneself to actually going through with the act.
What is going on in the body?

An individual who thinks or talks about suicide is considering ending his or her life. In some cases, thoughts of suicide are never acted upon. In other cases, suicidal thoughts lead to an attempt at ending one’s life.

People who are more prone to commit suicide are:
# white men
# 15 to 24 years old or over 65 years old
# living alone or have no children under age 18 living in the house
# suffering from major life stress such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job or a divorce

Eighty percent of completed suicides are men. However, most people who try to commit suicide but don’t actually die are women between the ages of 25 and 44 years old. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among children 10 to 19 years old.
More information:
Suicide

Chinese newspapers are controlled by the Communist Party to varying degrees and have a penchant for playing down bad news, but non-mainstream media burst forth this month with a flurry of reports on tragedies linked to failed medical reforms.

The security guard, Wei Zhaoan, was stabbed three times during a scuffle with the purse snatcher in Zhuhai in the southern province of Guangdong in 2003, media said. He recovered, was declared a “hero” by the government and awarded 10,000 yuan ($1,235), which he gave to his sick mother.

TRAGIC HERO

Wei jumped from a hospital window in Nanning, capital of nearby Guangxi province, on August 4 because he could not afford treatment for intestinal pains sustained from the stabbing. He was 25.

In Lianjiang county in Fujian, villager Zheng Kengdi was injured in a road accident on August 2 and died in hospital three hours later because his family lacked 100 yuan ($12) to pay for a blood transfusion, the Beijing News reported on Thursday.

The county hospital denied accusations by Zheng’s family that doctors refused to treat him. But the hospital paid his family 32,000 yuan in compensation and suspended a doctor and another member of staff for six months for their “bad attitude”, the newspaper said.

In another case in Fuzhou, police detained Dai Baogan, 28, last week after he stabbed a 50-year-old doctor of traditional Chinese medicine to death, newspapers and Web sites said.

Dai was angry because he had developed other illnesses after two years of costly treatment for inflammation of the prostate gland, they said.

About 80 percent of citizens sympathized with Dai, saying they understood how he felt. One wrote that many patients were forced to spend their life savings or borrow from friends and relatives to afford medical treatment.

About 50 percent of rural children who die from illness did not receive treatment, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

Zhan Jiang, dean of journalism at China Youth University for Political Sciences, attributed the string of reports to the inability of the government to rein in non-mainstream media.

“It’s not that the government does not want to curb (negative news). It lacks the ability to do so,” Zhan said.

Premier Wen Jiabao, under fire from political rivals over the disintegration of medical welfare, pledged last week to expand a pilot program that provides subsidized care to rural residents.

This month, Health Minister Gao Qiang accused greedy hospitals of charging excessive fees and prescribing unnecessary and expensive medication.

And the Development Research Centre, a cabinet think-tank, and the World Health Organization called government efforts to reform the medical system “basically unsuccessful.”

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