Health News from China

This month, our news from China has a largely medical and health theme. We are deeply concerned to serve the people of China in the poorer western provinces where living standards are very different from the richer coastal cities. We are able to help place qualified medical personnel for short-term and long-term engagements in China. If you believe God is calling you, please get in touch with your OMF national or regional office.

CHINA PREPARES FOR BIRD FLU
Beijing has drawn up a far-reaching plan to combat a bird flu epidemic that could kill tens of millions. The plan, which has not been published, involves curtailing travel to prevent the virus being carried around the country. It envisages emergency measures to ensure supplies of food, energy and other essential services.

In December last year the World Health Organization (WHO) gave warning of an unprecedented bird flu epidemic. “We are talking at least 2 to 7 million, maybe more—20 million or 50 million or in the worst case 100 million,” WHO’s regional director for Asia said. A viral jump from fowl to human beings is thought imminent. A WHO adviser in Beijing said China is taking the threat of a pandemic very seriously.

“We attach great importance to fighting bird flu. We haven’t closed our eyes for a single day,” a spokeswoman for the Chinese Center for Disease Control said. What really frightens Beijing is what villagers might bring with them from the farms of Hebei province—a prime breeding ground for the bird flu virus. Unregulated traffic from rural to urban areas is the most likely transmission route, as it was with the spread of the SARS virus in 2003. Maps have been apparently drawn up with separate marks penciled in for vehicle and pedestrian roadblocks. Initial measures would include the stockpiling of vaccines and the mobilization of trained personnel in affected areas. But given China’s size, experts expect that vaccines—as far as they even exist—will run out quickly.

When regional outbreaks start to form a pandemic, more drastic action will be needed. Essential services such as burial squads will be carried out by special government squads, possibly involving the army. “If 10,000 people died in one day, I wouldn’t know what to do,” a director of a private undertakers said. Sites for mass graves have been identified and quietly cordoned off to avoid the spread of other diseases, one official said.

Another big concern is the supply of food. Beijing has drawn up lists of emergency food depots. Citizens waiting out the pandemic in their homes would be informed by vehicle-mounted loudspeakers how to access food supplies. It is assumed that access to the media would be curtailed either because of lack of electricity or because of the closure of all public buildings including the State television studios.

According to WHO, bird flu killed 23 people in 2004—8 cases in Thailand and 15 in Vietnam. These outbreaks have been caused mainly by a highly contagious strain known as H5N1. The more often that humans come into contact with infected poultry, the more likely that H5N1 will join human flu and mutate into a more virulent disease. Recent outbreaks have been resistant to most drugs.“The level of transmission at the moment is unprecedented in history,” the WHO Asian Regional Director said. “History has told us that on average every 30 years, at least, a pandemic will occur. The next one is due—some would say it is overdue. Before it would have taken a year to spread around the world, but thanks to globalization it will take just weeks.” (The Times, 6 Dec 2004)

YOUR PRAYERS ANSWERED—JABEZ REVISITED
Do you remember that last year we asked special prayer for a toddler who couldn’t toddle? Jabez is the first-born son to a tribal Christian couple in the high mountains of southwest China where medical help is scarce. His mother had been told that she was unlikely to carry him to full-term or give birth to a live baby, but the tiny Christian community prayed. Jabez was born premature with the non-shaking variety of cerebral palsy, unable to walk properly but highly intelligent.

Praise God he is now walking and even running with the help of physiotherapy and a medical splint made especially for him. Several Fellowship medical personnel have visited the family. The splint will need to be re-molded to fit him exactly as he grows. Pray that his family will continue the vital physiotherapy exercises.

It is not easy for them as they travel dangerous mountain roads to attend a clinic staffed by Christian medics for their son’s vital check-ups.

Even at Christmas the local tribal believers can muster only 40, but the effect of seeing answered prayer has encouraged them. There are very few known Christians among this people group whose religion is a deep-seated demonic animism.

CLEAN WATER?
In China today 23% of the population (over 300 million people) live without clean water and 56% (over 700 million) have no basic sanitation. In rural areas, nearly 32% of villagers use unclean water while 71% lack basic sanitation. (UNICEF/WHO, 2004)

DEADLY FEVER RETURNS
Dongting Lake in central China is infected with a water-borne parasite called schistosomiasis, also known as snail fever, which can penetrate a person’s skin in only ten seconds and cause serious illness, even death. In some villages, infection rates have reached 80%. Nationally, nearly 800,000 people have the disease and an estimated 30 million are at risk.

What is most frustrating is that snail fever was largely eradicated in China during the 1950s as part of a national campaign. But the constant attention needed to control the disease has waned and it gradually returned partly because of neglect of the rural health system. In recent years the government has announced free programs to distribute drugs to regions with high infection rates. But doctors sometime demand patients buy other medicine to treat side-effects like liver ailments. Many peasants live on incomes of only US$150 a year. (New York Times, 10 March 2005)

CHINA PLANS TO SCRAP “RE-EDUCATION THROUGH LABOR”
China is planning to end imprisonment without trial in what appears to be a key concession to the European Union as the latter considers lifting its ban on selling arms to China.

The current system of “re-education through labor”—often used against dissidents and underground religious movements, including house-church Christians, allows police to lock up, without trial for up to four years, anyone they see as a troublemaker.

A Chinese Justice Department official said that a new system, to be termed “rehabilitation after illegal behavior” would include a right of appeal to the courts. The accused would also be entitled to a lawyer. Re-education through labor is high on the list of abuses cited by the United Nations and other critics of China’s human rights record. Those who have gone through it, including Christian activists and campaigners against the one-child policy, say it is used to torture and harass government opponents.

The maximum sentence under the new system would be cut to 18 months from the current three years, plus up to one year’s extension.
Many Christians have been imprisoned over the years unjustly under the “re-education through labor” system, which gives the police arbitrary powers. It remains to be seen whether the replacement system will be merely a cosmetic change, or lead to genuine reform of the penal system under which Christians unjustly accused would have genuine legal redress through the courts. (Daily Telegraph, 4 March 05)

HUNGRY FOR GOD’S WORD
In December last year a brother came all the way from Shandong to visit Christian Communications Ltd. in Hong Kong. He shared that he was serving the Lord in the rural churches in Shandong whose needs are great. To get Christian books for himself and his church, he had borrowed his travel expenses from Christian friends. He had come to Hong Kong in search of Christian books in simplified script. When we enquired further it turned out that as he had no money for a hostel in Hong Kong he had slept two nights out in the open under a fly-over. Such was his hunger for God’s word, it eclipsed his personal needs. We were able to send him back with all the Christian books he needed. (Report from CCL, Hong Kong, February 2005)

Copyright 2005 by OMF International