Cash
for Prescription
January
Last year, little Chinese boy Dongdong
lost his battle against Thalassemia and
passed away. What saddens his parents
most is that his death was not caused by
the illness but the treatment that meant
to cue the illness.
It
all started when Dongdong’s mom spotted
an online advertisement on the official
website of a Guangzhou hospital,
proclaiming a 93 percent of success rate
for marrow transplant operation done by
Doctor Zhu, a senior pediatrician at the
hospital. She applied.
Prior
to and after the operation, Doctor Zhu
urged her to purchase an important super
drug from a man surnamed Wang, priced at
massive 4500 yuans a dose. Shortly after
taking the drug, the boy developed a
complication – he began vomiting and
urinating blood up to 40 times a day,
which eventually killed him.
Dongdong
is not alone. Between July 2004 and
September 2005, Doctor Zhu performed
marrow transplant on 15 children, from
which he pocketed 4000 yuans of gift
cashes from the parents, not counting the
commissions he got from that fake drug
smuggler Wang.
It
is up to his young patients and their
families to bear the grave consequences
of his cold-blooded acts. Some families
have to sell their property or run into
huge debts to pay the medical bills that
amount to as much as 900,000 yuans. But
this is nothing comparing to the young
lives lost. Of 15 his patients, 9 died,
thanks to his fake super drug.
Yet
this is not an isolated case.
Medical
practitioners, particularly those
dominant Western Medicine heavyweights,
are viewed by many Chinese as one of the
most corrupt groups in today’s China
– just a little behind the property
developers - and cash for prescription
practice is common. A few years back
during the Sars crisis they were called
White Angles, now they’re more
frequently referred as White Snakes.
Early
this year, when China’s Health Ministry
finally decided to take an action, 200
million yuans of drug commission were
forced to hand over. But this is believed
to be only the tip of the iceberg.
Yet
the greed demonstrated by some of them
are just boundless. In order to achieve a
total dominance of the market, they keep
lobbying for eliminating the cost
effective Chinese Herble Medicine that
Chinese people have relied on for health
care for thousands of years. In a recent
farcical petition drama initiated by an
America-based Western Medicine doctor and
a philosophy teacher in China that calls
for the exclusion of the Chinese Medicine
from the national health care system, the
majority of the signiture bearers, as it
is disclosed, are the Western Medicine
practitioners.
Related stories:
Previous
| Next
All
Stories
|
