Thirteen-year-old Chen Junyi has had to deal with an unbearable pain in her stomach since 2000.

That same year, this girl from Huashi Town, an impoverished town in Luoding, south China's Guangdong Province, began eating cigarette butts. Her appetite for them eventually grew from about a dozen a day to more than 30. She also started eating uncooked rice.

Her body stopped developing, but her belly expanded so that she looked like she was pregnant.

Her frightened parents brought her to the town's biggest hospital, but doctors could not pinpoint her illness.

The lingering illness remained shrouded in mystery until last month, when the girl's parents traded in their life savings to take her to a hospital in Luoding. There she was diagnosed with Thalassemia major, an inherited blood disease that hampers hemoglobin production and leads to the excessive destruction of red blood cells.

"Doctors said blood transfusions would keep my daughter alive, but the only way to cure the disease would be to have a bone marrow transplant. The surgery costs about 300,000 yuan (US$39,500)," said Chen's mother, Zeng Xiaozhen, in an interview with CCTV.

"But we couldn't even afford the blood transfusions, which cost 600 yuan each," she said.

The doctors recommended that the girl be transferred to a well-equipped hospital in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, as soon as possible.

"We have found a subcutaneous hemorrhage, which is a very dangerous symptom," said a doctor surnamed Tan at the Luoding Hospital for Women and Children.

None of the hospitals in Luoding were equipped to help the girl, he added.

The girl's liver and spleen have also expanded to dangerous proportions, which is one of the symptoms of Thalassemia major and the cause of her swelling belly.

CCTV ran a report about the girl on Monday night and asked the community to donate money through a hotline (010-64462478) operated by Children's Hope International, a Beijing-based non-profit, non-government organization.

Local donors provided 6,000 yuan after the family sought help from Luoding Television Station.

Thalassemia is particularly prevalent in Mediterranean countries, the Middle East and in Asia.

(China Daily June 27, 2007)