Long waits for medical care get longer in China

updated 7:36 p.m. ET May 15, 2008

DEYANG, China - After 11-year-old Zhang Jiazhi crawled free of the rubble that remained of his middle school, his parents began a 20-hour ordeal to get medical care for their son, whose arms were crushed to a pulp.

Jiazhi survived. But with care delayed for nearly a day, the boy who loved to play pingpong and carve wooden toys for his friends, had to have both his arms amputated.

"I tried to ask the doctor to at least save his right hand, which he writes with. But they said it was too late," said the child's father, Zhang Qingyou, a look of sad resignation etched across his high cheekbones.

Getting care in China's disaster zone following Monday's massive earthquake is a struggle. Hospitals, medicine, blood, needles, doctors — everything is in short supply, except for the injured.

Desperate search for help
For Jiazhi, the nearest hospital to his farming village was rattled by aftershocks Monday and the boy was turned away. His parents rushed with their son to the city's main square, which was turned into an enormous triage center. It teemed with thousands of injured, overwhelming doctors as they jostled to get on ambulances.

Jiazhi and his parents squeezed into an ambulance with nine other people, finally making their way to Deyang City People's Hospital, the largest in an area of several quake-devastated counties. After waiting for hours in the packed emergency room, the boy was sent to an operating room, where, along with seven other patients lying side-by-side, doctors performed surgeries at the same time.

But it was too late.

The doctors couldn't save his arms, the boy's father said, because "after two hours, they said the nerves and blood vessels die and there's no way to get it back to normal."

Across the earthquake zone, many hospitals were obliterated or rendered unsafe. Numerous makeshift care centers have sprung up on the front lines of badly damaged towns. All are overwhelmed with injured still pouring in from hard-hit areas three days after the quake killed nearly 20,000 people.

"What do we need? We just need some rest," said Wu Tianfu, a doctor at a tent set up by the Red Cross Society of China in the town of Hanwang, where hundreds of school children died.

"Then we need gloves, masks, iodine, sutures, cold medicine," said Wu. "It's a long list."

'Insufficient' public health care
The disaster has hit a health system that has been sorely neglected in China's spectacular economic rise. Underfunded by the government and unaffordable to most, health care is poor in inland areas like Sichuan province, where the magnitude-7.9 quake struck, highlighting the yawning gap between prosperous urban dwellers and struggling rural Chinese.

"The public health care system in China is insufficient," Vice Minister of Health Gao Qiang told reporters in Beijing on Thursday. He suggested the government would pick up the costs of care to earthquake victims, many of whom have little or no insurance. "The government should be responsible for providing medical treatment to them," he said.

At Deyang City People's Hospital, where more than 1,000 injured have been treated, supplies of blood, disinfectants and needles were used up in the first two days, according to the hospital's Communist Party secretary. Operating rooms were moved from the 12th to the second floor in case of large aftershocks.

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