An on-site health clinic has been set up especially for 15,000 workers at Hongshan Garden, the largest affordable housing project under construction in Beijing's Chongwen district.

The clinic will provide workers timely care when afflicted with common ailments, such as headache, slight fever, digestive system problems and trauma, China Daily learned from Ma Yanming, an official of Beijing Municipal Health Bureau.

It will also help stop workers going to underground clinics that charge more, according to Ma.

The workers will be exempt from registration fees, diagnosis fees and 50 percent medical costs, with half covered by the project contractor.

The on-site clinic will also be responsible for transferring those with serious diseases or injuries to the nearest hospital for better treatment.

"Such practice will be spread to other large construction sites of more than 100,000 sq m throughout Beijing in the future," Beijing Daily quoted Zhang Yuping, an official with the city's construction commission, as saying, on Friday.

The 500-sq-m clinic at Hongshan Garden is equipped with a general examination room, a treatment room, transfusion room, sanitizing room and pharmacy, where all medicines will be sold at lower prices than in drugstores.

Experienced doctors and well-trained nurses will staff the clinic.

Construction workers who usually suffer from skin injury, headache and digestive problems can get good treatment here, according to Mi Heping, a doctor with 37-year medical working experience.

Currently most construction workers in Beijing have to go to private clinics or big hospitals to see doctors.

They are often either charged more at private clinics or have to line up in a long queue at big hospitals, according to the city's health bureau.

Hongshan Garden's 14 residential buildings are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2010.

(China Daily March 10, 2008)