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Do-it-yourself dialysis center in Beijing: sick cannot afford the hospital

For four years, the sick have been doing dialysis on their own, with used machines bought together with other makeshift instruments. Now the health authorities have confiscated the equipment and closed the center, because it is "unsafe." But the sick say that, without this center and without state aid, they will die in a few months.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Chinese migrants have created a "do-it-yourself" dialysis "clinic" in Beijing, because they cannot afford expensive hospital treatment. Now the health authorities have closed the clinic, and the patients say they will die soon if the state does not help them.

In China, medical treatment must be paid for, including essential treatment like dialysis for those with kidney disease. But many do not have insurance to cover the cost, nor can they pay for it themselves. So in 2004, four sick people bought two used dialysis machines, paid an inexperienced nurse, and set up a rudimentary but functioning dialysis center in the yard of a house in the village of Baimiao, in the district of Tongzhou in the suburbs of Beijing.

There are no doctors or nurses at the center, the patients themselves - migrants, farmers, retired people, street vendors, and students - manage and use the machines. They have all signed a statement that they accept full responsibility for the consequences that this could have, and sterilize the equipment themselves. As many as 17 patients have used the machines and shared the costs, now there are about ten (in the photo: a patient performs dialysis).

But on April 2, health officials confiscated the machines and closed the center. They promised the 10 sick people they will have free dialysis, if they return to their cities of origin. But the patients do not trust them, they are afraid that if they return to their villages, no one will keep their promises. Many of them come from distant villages, in Shanxi, Anhui, Liaoning, Hebei, Inner Mongolia.

Wei Qiang, from Inner Mongolia, one of the four who started the initiative, tells the newspaper South China Morning Post that in his village, the health officials in general reimburse only 30% of such expenses, and that he would still have to "pay 5,000 yuan per month, while now I pay about 1,000 yuan, including food and housing." "I know this is illegal, but we are not running the clinic for profit but to save our own lives," he adds. "Without the machine I will be gone within a year, and some of us are so poor that they will be dead within a month."