Public hospitals in Hong Kong may stop admitting mainland mothers seeking to deliver their child in the territory to keep more resources for the use of local women. more ›

A controversial bill that is being proposed in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region will, if passed, make real-name HIV testing and disclosure compulsory. Under the regulation, which is still in draft form, HIV-positive patients would have to  inform their partners of their status within three days of receiving test results, failing which this would be done by health workers. more ›

A man has passed away in Shenzhen a week after being admitted to the hospital for bird flu. This is said to be the first bird flu fatality since 2010: more ›

more ›

The most recent Chinese breakthrough in genetics concerns a Shanghai woman who was able to give birth to a healthy girl, despite harboring an inherited genetic disease, thanks to a new screening method that selects and eliminates aberrant gene embryos from test tube babies. more ›

Since the 1980’s, Chinese families have been desperately seeking new ways to bypass China’s infamous ‘one-child policy’ (计划生育政策). One loophole around the policy concerns the birth of twins (or triplets, etc.), which the government allows for families, forgoing the usual fines or punishments for having more than one child. Recently, hospitals in Southern Guangdong province have gone quite public with their twin-producing scheme: Say hello to “multiple baby pills”. more ›

In the latest episode of "Dude, what?" there's a small village of about 800 people in Deqing County, just outside of Huzhou, that serves as a breeding area for three million snakes, including hundreds of thousands of venomous cobras and vipers. They're used as food (some commenters on the photos say they've tasted snake and describe it as wet and slimy) and their venom is collected and used as medicine. more ›

We told you about this two-headed baby born in Suining, Sichuan province last month and thought we'd share some updates! The two girls were born sharing so many organs that the doctors were be unable to separate them and worried they would not survive. We're happy to inform you that the the girls are still alive and being cared for by the intensive care unit of a Chongqing hospital. more ›

The birth of a pair of conjoined twins who share a single body has stunned doctors in Suining, Sichuan province. The girls were delivered by caesarean section and weighed 9 pounds. While the twins have separate spines and oesophaguses, they share all other major organs and hence separating them would be impossible, say doctors. The parents of the girls, both migrant farmers, say they had never wanted the child as they were not sure if they were able to afford it but doctors did not detect the abnormality in the baby until a few days before birth. The top priority now for doctors though is to keep the twins alive. more ›

"HEALTH authorities are investigating an illegal trade in human placentas that was said to be thriving in a hospital in south China's Guangdong Province. Authorities with the Health Bureau of Baiyun District in Guangzhou City said the Red Cross Hospital of Baiyun District will face punishment and fines if tip-offs they received were verified, yesterday's New Express Daily reported. A whistleblower identified as 'A Hui' said human placentas - considered a rich source of nutrients by some people - were being sold at 20 yuan (US$ 3.08) each by nurses at the hospital's department of obstetrics and gynecology. According to the whistleblower, the nurses kept fresh placentas they obtained from women who had given birth in a fridge in an office. He said his wife, who gave birth at the hospital last year, had her placenta taken away without receiving any notification. He then began to pay attention to the hidden business, which was banned by China's Health Ministry in 2005. A New Express Daily reporter went undercover to purchase a placenta. After receiving 20 yuan, a chief nurse took out one in a plastic bag and told the reporter that it should be stewed with lean meat and Chinese dates for about an hour. Human placentas are banned from trade due to health concerns. They supply oxygen and nutrients to the fetus during pregnancy and allow fetal waste to be disposed of via the mother's kidneys. The placenta can be infected during labor or carry viruses such as hepatitis B from the mother, according to doctors." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

33-year-old "Chu Cao" or "Weeding" (锄草) was diagnosed with Hepatitis B in 1994 and has spent the past year campaigning across China to improve knowledge about the disease. In each of the 23 cities she has visited so far, she holds up a sign offering to buy dinner for whoever is willing to eat with her: more ›

Hou Gouzhu, now 11 years old, had half of his skull removed as a child because of Rasmussen’s Encephalitis. Two years ago, when he was 8, photos of him and his father splashed across Chinese and international media. He was quickly dubbed "half-brain boy" and many felt sympathy for the son and his father, who said they had spent every penny they owned on Hou's medical treatments, and couldn't even afford the ticket back to their home in Shandong province. Since then, donations have poured fourth and Hou was able to undergo cosmetic surgery. He was fitted with a skull made of titanium mesh, effectively giving him half his head back! more ›

In November 2008, illegal Chinese-made sex pills made headlines when ten men in Singapore died rather gruesome deaths after taking them. For the two years following, Shanghai authorities have struggled to reign in the counterfeit Viagra market but have been held back by a bureaucratic loophole: vendors claim that the drugs are herbal in nature and thus a health supplement and not a drug (and so out of the FDA's reach.) Now, armed with new intellectual property rights legislation, a joint government force has begun a crackdown on these potentially fatal little blue pills. more ›

As China ups its marketing as a destination for medical tourism, more and more foreigners are expected to arrive in the People's Republic for all sorts of treatments and operations, and we're not talking about just acupuncture or foot reflexology here. more ›

If you are a local Chinese man who has successfully impregnated your wife without any help from the doctor -- there's probably a grand total of five of you reading this, but anyhow -- the Shanghai Sperm Bank wants to study your jism. more ›

We've long heard of various other health benefits of green tea, but apparently drinking the stuff might be good for your... eyes? According to a study by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, antioxidants found in green tea may help protect against eye diseases. more ›

We love documentaries about China, especially old ones. Though this one is a bit academic, it's got beautiful footage of the Chinese countryside from 1975, and contains a ton of really interesting information about the history of the medical industry in China. The barefoot doctors, who we're sure still exist around the country, are a fascinating subject: we're shocked at how vastly different society was during the Cultural Revolution, but after watching this, we have a feeling that their trade hasn't changed much since the fall of Mao. more ›

Since actors pretending to be doctors in Chinese infomercials are no longer legal, we've decided to delight you today with one of these hilarious - and soon to be rare - specimens. Everything you would ever want in a shanzhai pill ad is here: clipped together Hollywood scenes, a laowai "expert"... and John Voight as POTUS. more ›

Sad news for anyone hoping to play the role of laowai doctor #3, China has issued a law effectively banning actors and celebrities from appearing in medical ads. A new notice posted by SARFT bars people without medical qualifications from making health claims in an attempt to cut down on the snake oil sales tactics rampant throughout the country. The restrictions come after an internet hunt exposed at least 12 fake experts selling medicine under different pseudonyms in Shandong alone. Source:Reuters more ›

• China will start providing two imported HIV drugs, Viread and Kaletra, to patients who have started developing resistance to cheaper, domestic alternatives. This means that nine of 20 drugs to combat AIDS are now available to patients in China.
• The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has condemned China's deportation of a musician from Cape Town, South Africa, who was ordered to leave China within 48 hours when health authorities found she was HIV-positive. Apparently, the woman was not even informed or counselled about her HIV test.
• Health authorities in Henan province claim that significant improvements have been made in controlling HIV/AIDS and that death rates there are "closer to the normal mortality rate and lower than the national average". According to them, Zhumadian, one of the cities hit by illegal blood sales in the 1990s, has seen death rates more than halved to 5 percent in the past six years.

Too much of a good thing, as they say, is bad. China is supposed to have the world's highest rate of antibiotics abuse and the problem, apart from killing an estimated 80,000 a year, is leading to an increased resistance of bacteria to drugs, resulting in a rising number of recessive syphilis cases, among others. An ambitious two-year project has now been launched to train over 30,000 medical staff across China in the responsible use of antibiotics. more ›

Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera reports from Beijing of the discrimination that Hepatitis B carriers in China have to deal with — in school and at the workplace. Most of this discrimination, of course, is rooted in the widespread ignorance about the virus throughout society, and results in Hep B carriers being shunned in the same way as HIV/AIDS carriers are shunned in China. more ›

Shanghai-based Canadian documentary photographer Ryan Pyle informs us:

It appears that Li Guoxing, the first recipient of a face transplant surgery in China as been confirmed dead. Li Guoxing received a face transplant surgery in 2006 from surgeon Guo Shuzhong in Xi'an, China. If you can remember Mr. Li, 30 years old when he had the surgery, had is face ripped off by a bear while hunting in rural Yunnan province where he lived in a small village community. Mr. Li's death, it has been said, was due to an infection because he wasn't taking prescribed immune-system drugs properly. Another report says he was favoring herbal medicines instead. No final report on the death will be available because Mr. Li has been buried for several months now, and no autopsy was completed. more ›

Big week in food safety and health-related news. First the melamine eggs and the tainted soy sauce and wasabi, then the cholera outbreak in Hainan, and now this — 10 men have died in Singapore from complications resulting from the consumption of illegal China-made sex enhancement pills. The Straits Times reports:

ILLEGAL sex enhancement pills have killed six more men here in the past five months, bringing the drug's death toll to 10 this year. more ›

Acupuncture may be one of the most widely-accepted forms of traditional Chinese medicine, but did you know there was a DIY alternative? more ›

more ›

Turns out that the ever-miraculous Viagra can do more than help you get it on: recent findings show that the drug increases blood flow to the lungs, potentially enhancing performance on the field, as well as in the bedroom. But Olympian users of the famous little blue pill, or "Vitamin V" as it's known in the athletic world, shouldn't have to curb their habits just yet, since testing is probably still in too early a stage to ban the drug for 2008. more ›

A friend of ours went to the Huashi Pharmacy, at the Portman, to purchase the inhaler she uses due to asthma. She didn't have a prescription, but she never needed one before. As long as she had lived in Shanghai, such meds were always over-the-counter, perhaps because of the excellent air quality found in the city. But on Saturday, the workers at the pharmacy told her she could no longer buy the inhaler she needed to breathe without a prescription. Why? "Because of the Olympics," she was told. A little more digging shows that certain inhalers are considered stimulants by the International Olympic Committee, and thus new regulations were put into effect. Luckily, our friend had health insurance and walked to her doctor's office, got a prescription and her meds — the expenses were all covered, but for uninsured asthmatics, this policy change could be quite a surprise hit to the pocketbook. Just thought we'd warn you: Don't wait until the middle of an asthma attack to get all your paperwork in order. more ›

The above is from a report about the cancer patients affected by the corrupted medicine from Shanghai's Hualian Pharmaceutical. According to an article from Jan. 10:

Under the guidance of and with the participation of a joint investigation team set up between the Ministry of Health and State Drug and Food Administration, concerned departments in Shanghai identified the cause of the accident: Hualian's staff mixed Vincristine Sulfate into Methotrexate for injection and Cytarabine for injection, and this caused damage to the drugs and made them unqualified and unusable.

1. university students who might be studying medicine and could use the cash, 2. people who want to further the cause of medicine (and who might be sick themselves, and thus have a stake in it), and 3. people who are in it just for the money. more ›