It's time for tea in China, where greedy doctors are taking the . . .
Friday March 23 2007
The scandal broke only days after Gao Qiang, the Health Minister, gave warning that the failures and high cost of healthcare were causing widespread discontent and posing a serious threat to stability.
The reporters from the semi-official China News Service and colleagues from the local television station in prosperous southeastern Zhejiang province carried out their experiment over two days. Out of ten hospitals in Hangzhou, the capital, six concluded that the reporters had urinary tract infections.
The journalists had turned up at the hospitals with jars of green tea that they passed off as urine when they presented themselves for tests.
At the Xiaoshan Hospital, a doctor produced the results of his tests within five minutes and said that they indicated the presence of white blood cells, meaning that the patient suffered from a urinary tract infection. He prescribed 220 yuan (?23) of medication, a sizeable sum in a country where the average farmer earns less than ?1,500 a year.
One reporter returned twice to the same hospital - and was given the same results based on tests on the same jar of green tea. Some of the hospitals even tested the "urine" under a microscope.
China's healthcare system has fallen behind in the country's breakneck rush to achieve rapid economic growth, presenting the Government with a huge challenge to treat its people. Long gone are the days of socialist ideals fostered by Chairman Mao in the 1970s when farmers received rudimentary care from "barefoot" doctors who volunteered to staff clinics run by communes. The rate of Caesarean births has soared to 50pc, against the standard of 15pc set by the World Health Organisation. This is fuelled largely by recommendations from doctors who can charge more for such surgery. At the eminent Union Medical College Hospital, a natural labour costs ?150, a Caesarean ?360.
Doctors regularly ask for - and receive - "red envelopes" containing cash and even though a fund has been set up to encourage doctors to donate anything they receive back to the State, officials refuse to say whether this ever happens. Last year the Government sacked seven hospital officials and disciplined two others after the family of a 75-year-old man and his insurer were charged ?454,000 to treat his cancer. (© The Times, London)
JANE MACARTNEY
