Fertility clinics drive thriving black market in eggs

Young Chinese women are risking their fertility by selling off their eggs to unscrupulous fertiliy clinics, a CCTV program has claimed.

As part of an investigation into the "human egg black market" CCTV found that high school students and university students were selling their eggs to agents for a few thousand yuan. The clinics then offer these eggs to infertile women who pay 30,000- 100,000 yuan (US$5000-$15,000).

The report said young girls were picked because of their looks, education and health and had to endure a series of injections with fertility hormones to stimulate ovulation so their eggs could be harvested by clinics. The young women said they used the cash to pay off credit card debts, but most were unaware of the serious risks of the procedures, including infertility.

Commentators said the commercial transactions of human eggs were illegal and banned, but there was little enforcement of the rules in practice. They said illegal clinics and the doctors who worked in them made large amounts of money, offering infertile women the chance to select a donor egg based on looks, intelligence and other personal characteristics of the donor. Despite being illegal, the egg black market was a thriving market and barely concealed  with advertisements by agents common on the internet.

The report said the fertility agents and their networks also offered infertile women other services such as surrogate mothers, as part of packages that could cost as much as 400,000 yuan.The trade was very lucrative and many young women saw nothing ethically wrong with what they were doing, it said.
The commentators said there was a need for a widespread crackdown to enforce the regulations on artificial reproductive technology. There was also a need to better regulate reproductive clinics and promote legitimate egg donation rather than the commercial practices, they added.

Africans face health discrimination in China | Cochlear implants success | Fake doctor operates on 1500 women | Psychiatrist says 10 words charges 1000 yuan fee

Africans in China face medical discrimination
With the growing economic links between China and Africa there are as many as 100,000 Africans in Guangzhou but they lack access to healthcare, an article in The Lancet this weeks says. Africans in China face racial discrimination, which fuels mental health problems and also is a barrier to them getting access to needed health services and support. Many Chinese people maintain stereotypes toward Africans viewing them as prone to violence and posing risks to public health through spreading diseases, the article says. While China sends medical teams to Africa, it ignores the Africans living within China.
"Providing Africans medical care is consistent with China's health-care reform, but the system has failed to close the treatment gap. Chinese doctors are not trained in culturally adapted care or in the management of specific diseases affecting Africans, and translation services are unavailable," the article concludes.

More Chinese medical tourists
Affluent Chinese are now seeking medical care overseas, according to CCTV. Their report says more Chinese are going to foreign countries for treatment and the trend is blamed on the lack of access to high quality clinics in China.

No takers for dispute insurance
Few people are choosing to take part in a new surgical insurance program that is designed to reduce medical disputes. The new medical insurance scheme pays only in the event of unsatisfactory results caused by medical malpractice not covered by traditional medical indemnity insurance.

Bionic ears work well in China
Cochlear implants have been used successfully in hundreds of Chinese deaf children and have had few complications, according to a new report from Henan. Cochlear implantation is a safe procedure and early postoperative complications are minor, say clinicians from the Department of Otology at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University.

Fake doctor did nearly 1500 operations
A bogus surgeon working at a gynaecology clinic in Henan performed 1485 operations on women and made almost half a million yuan in profit before being caught, Zhengzhou media report. The Pingdangshan court sentenced bogus doctor Ma Juan to nine years in prison and fined him 300,00 yuan for performing minimally invasive surgery on women at the Third Peoples Hospital gynaecology clinic. The manager of the clinic was also jailed for 12 years for employing the fake doctor and encouraging him to exaggerate illness and overtreat women with unnecessary but profitable operations such as cervical cauterisation and nerve blocks.

Psych clinic has few words of comfort
A Chongqing father has complained of extortionate charges and poor doctor-patient communication at a mental health clinic where he took his uncommunicative 'autistic' daughter for treatment. The man told the Chongqing Evening News that he had to pay almost 1000 yuan for antidepressant medicines after a brief consultation with a doctor who did not speak more than ten words to him or his daughter. The father sad the costs for the questionnaire test and brief consultation were excessive. A medical expert said mental health clinics were under a lot of time pressure and were not designed to provide psychotherapy but to treat psychiatric diseases. If patients want to talk more they should visit a psychologist, he suggested.

China medical education gets internships | Saving for medical bills | Women have hysterectomies for profit

 China will set up a standardised internship training program in 2015 for medical graduates before they become qualified to be doctors, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Officials said China does not currently have a national standard for training, and training to become resident doctors depends on the hospitals where they are employed, leading to differential medical levels across regions. The new standardised "5 + 3" year training system will ensure that graduates get experience in several branches of clinical medicine before getting a full licence to practice medicine. According to the Global Times, the training bases will first be set up in top level hospitals and some lower level hospitals based on the local situation. They will be subsidized by the governments and central finance.
 
One of the main reasons why Chinese people save so much is to prepare to pay for future medical bills, a report says. In China, 64% of people surveyed were actively saving for health issues, according to ECNS. Savings rates for health were higher in China compared to other countries surveyed, and Chinese people used diversified strategies in saving for health issues, with local currency, whole life insurance and pure term life insurance among the choices.

And in Taiwan it is claimed that  many of the 20,000 women who have a hysterectomy each year do so to gain thousands of dollars in infertility compensation from the Labor Insurance Fund.
According to the China Post, researchers said Taiwan had the largest percentage of “womb-less women”and this might be due to the lure of  infertility benefits amounting to more than NT$100,000for women under 45 who have a hysterectomy.

Female civil servants protest against gynaecological examinations

Students say employment-related gynaecological checks for female civil servants are intrusive and unnecessary

[translation] by Michael Woodhead
On November 26,  female students in the Wuhan (Hubei) Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department mounted a 'flash' demonstration to protest against the current  mandatory female civil servant employment gynaecological medical checks.
According to protest organisers, the currently female civil servant recruitment examination, includes a gynecological examination, which they say is unnecessary and intrusive
"This  requires women not only to accept a vaginal speculum exam, but also answer questions such as the age of first menstruation cycle, amount of bleeding, the duration and so on.
　　"We believe that the the entry examination program has nothing to do with the ability to perform in the civil service, and violates the privacy of citizens. We are therefore mounting a flash event to remind the relevant departments to get rid of the civil service gynecological entrance requirement," the organisers said.
　　One student who participated in the "flash"said that according to the employment health check manual, the focus of the gynecological examination was to be for sexually transmitted diseases and malignancy, but normal work exposure does not cause the spread of STDs - and infections would not usually prevent a civil servant from properly fulfilling their duties. She also noted that STDs are best detected through blood tests not intimate examinations.
　　Currently, Hubei Province, Human Resources and Social Security Department is yet to respond to the action of the students.
　　A Zhongnan University Law School associate professor Lian Yungang said the imposition of  gynecological examinations for female civil servants' employment checks could be seen as employment discrimination, and contrary to Equal Opportunity provisions of China's labor laws and employment regulations.
　　The requirements because they appear lack of purpose, are not "appropriate" and exceed the "principle of proportionality" beyond a reasonable range, he added.
Read more: China Medical Tribune

Shanghai provides free pre-conception checks

According to the Shanghai Family Planning Commission, the Shanghai city districts has provided free pre-pregnancy eugenic health checks to 21,719 couples planning to become pregnant couples.
Results from five districts showed that pregnancy risk factors were found for 21% of couples (14.5% males and 27% females ), mostly reproductive system abnormalities.
Among females, leucorrhea  abnormalities accounted for 11.5%, while Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis infection accounted for 2.9% of the positive urinalysis abnormalities. Liver and kidney dysfunction  was seen in 6% of couples), and 11.5% had abnormal hepatitis B antibodies, Syphilis was also detect din some subjects and abnormal thyroid function was seen in up to 6.6% of couples.
These couples required further investigation and were advised that the risk factors should be normalised before considering pregnancy. 　　
Clinicians involved in the project said that virus antibody test showed that 15% of  females were rubella virus antibody negative, and it were recommended to have pre-pregnancy rubella vaccine; gynecological examination also revealed abnormal uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts, a small amount of uterine malformations, all of which may affect fertility and required personalised medical guidance.

Read more: Health Times/Jiankan Bao