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)