[Swprograms] China's failing health service: Assignment on BBC World Service investigates

[Mike Barraclough <softbulletin1@xxxxxxxxx>]

China's rate of economic growth may be the envy of the
world, but an investigation by Assignment on BBC World
Service has revealed that its health-care service is
in crisis. The programme reports on doctors taking
bribes, surgeons inflating the cost of operations
according to the estimated wealth of patients and the
poor plunging into debt to pay for treatment.

The BBC's Beijing reporter, Louisa Lim, investigates
how an economic reform programme has dealt a lethal
blow to a health care system which under Chairman Mao
40 years ago doubled life expectancy, cut infant
mortality by 80 per cent and eliminated diseases like
small pox and polio.

In a series of moving interviews, she meets:

a family forced into debt paying for chemo-therapy for
a relative with cancer of the womb - treatment which
ended prematurely when they ran out of money;

a family whose mother is dying because of a failed
operation - for which they had paid $18,000 in bribes;

and a whistle-blower who revealed the secret charging
system operating in his hospital - and who paid for
his revelations with his marriage and almost his life.

Assignment: China's health care system in crisis is on
BBC World Service at 0906 GMT and 1906 GMT on Thursday
2 March.

The programme will also be broadcast on Crossing
Continents on BBC Radio 4 at 11.00am on 2 March.

(BBC Press Office)

 


		
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