Increasing costs of drugs to treat cancer patients is a big headwind that could put an end to Chinese economic growth
Li Defang remembers the day she considered giving up on her granddaughter — a four-year-old battling leukemia.
Money had dried up, and little Zhao Jing was in a hospital in Hefei city in eastern China. She was struggling, feverish and coping with an infection. In those desperate hours back in October 2014, Li recalls whispering sadly to her: “If one day grandma runs out of money for your medicines, maybe I will have to abandon you.”
Such life-and-death calculations aren’t that rare in a China that is home to the world’s largest number of cancer cases, and where patients can sometimes pay among the highest prices in the world for drug treatments. For the past year, Li and her granddaughter have lived in a slum near the hospital. Called Wujianong, the tenement is home to about thirty other families who have also journeyed hundreds of miles to seek better care for their sick children. Here they live in damp, moldy rooms just off a narrow street strewn with plastic bags and muddy puddles. They’ve all found that cancer can be a financial catastrophe in a society where private insurance is a rarity and many costs for serious illnesses aren’t covered by government insurance.
Surging health-care costs are turning into one of the biggest threats to the world’s second largest economy and its consumers. About $115 billion will be spent on pharmaceuticals in China this year. As patients struggle to pay, international drug companies face slower growth in the country and government pressure to curb prices. For families, their biggest adversary isn’t only the disease, but the prohibitive cost of care.
Remission
Zhao, whose nickname is Jingjing, suffers from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of blood cancer, and has rallied after 12 rounds of chemotherapy over the last year. Her chances of full remission are high, her doctor says. But times are hard again for her grandparents and another round of drugs may be out of reach.
Vfend, an anti-fungal treatment made by New York-based Pfizer Inc., helped Jingjing fight several infections last year. But it cost her grandparents about 3,800 yuan ($590) for every ten tablets — about half their yearly income. A chemotherapy medicine from a Chinese drugmaker, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co., came at just under 5,000 yuan ($780) a vial.
About a year ago, her grandparents left their farm in eastern China’s Huoqiu county and relocated 100 miles away to live near the Anhui Provincial Children’s hospital. The slum is just behind the hospital complex, and the city’s glimmering skyscrapers and towering residential apartments stand only a few blocks away.
Jingjing’s neighbors are other children who have cancer. Their families rent the rooms for about $60 a month to save on the expense of a hospital stay or rental apartment, and to stretch their budgets a little longer for the drugs that are the difference between life and death for their kids. Even little Jingjing senses the dangers of this precarious balance. She picked up on her grandmother’s worries that day in the hospital. Now, when Li goes out to buy food or pay a bill, Jingjing worries she’s left for good, sometimes saying tearfully, “Grandma, please don’t abandon me, when I get better I want to go to school.”
Bloomberg News
To read the original article click here
Money had dried up, and little Zhao Jing was in a hospital in Hefei city in eastern China. She was struggling, feverish and coping with an infection. In those desperate hours back in October 2014, Li recalls whispering sadly to her: “If one day grandma runs out of money for your medicines, maybe I will have to abandon you.”
Such life-and-death calculations aren’t that rare in a China that is home to the world’s largest number of cancer cases, and where patients can sometimes pay among the highest prices in the world for drug treatments. For the past year, Li and her granddaughter have lived in a slum near the hospital. Called Wujianong, the tenement is home to about thirty other families who have also journeyed hundreds of miles to seek better care for their sick children. Here they live in damp, moldy rooms just off a narrow street strewn with plastic bags and muddy puddles. They’ve all found that cancer can be a financial catastrophe in a society where private insurance is a rarity and many costs for serious illnesses aren’t covered by government insurance.
Surging health-care costs are turning into one of the biggest threats to the world’s second largest economy and its consumers. About $115 billion will be spent on pharmaceuticals in China this year. As patients struggle to pay, international drug companies face slower growth in the country and government pressure to curb prices. For families, their biggest adversary isn’t only the disease, but the prohibitive cost of care.
Remission
Zhao, whose nickname is Jingjing, suffers from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of blood cancer, and has rallied after 12 rounds of chemotherapy over the last year. Her chances of full remission are high, her doctor says. But times are hard again for her grandparents and another round of drugs may be out of reach.
Vfend, an anti-fungal treatment made by New York-based Pfizer Inc., helped Jingjing fight several infections last year. But it cost her grandparents about 3,800 yuan ($590) for every ten tablets — about half their yearly income. A chemotherapy medicine from a Chinese drugmaker, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co., came at just under 5,000 yuan ($780) a vial.
About a year ago, her grandparents left their farm in eastern China’s Huoqiu county and relocated 100 miles away to live near the Anhui Provincial Children’s hospital. The slum is just behind the hospital complex, and the city’s glimmering skyscrapers and towering residential apartments stand only a few blocks away.
Jingjing’s neighbors are other children who have cancer. Their families rent the rooms for about $60 a month to save on the expense of a hospital stay or rental apartment, and to stretch their budgets a little longer for the drugs that are the difference between life and death for their kids. Even little Jingjing senses the dangers of this precarious balance. She picked up on her grandmother’s worries that day in the hospital. Now, when Li goes out to buy food or pay a bill, Jingjing worries she’s left for good, sometimes saying tearfully, “Grandma, please don’t abandon me, when I get better I want to go to school.”
Bloomberg News
To read the original article click here
