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Hello,
I have just come back for my second assignment in China and this time I am in Beijing. The air is terrible here, and coming from NYC I thought I knew what that meant, but it is far far worse than NY ever was even before unleaded gas and polllution control. Your friend should not come to Beijing and probably not Shanghai either. The country side is pretty clean, but he should check the specific school site out with a reliable person already there. Getting medical care can be a nightmare if travel is involved, a bad attack could kill you before you get to the hospital. I don't have ashma but I taught a number of students in NYC with it. They needed to be near electricity to use the pumps. If your friend is that bad, I think it is too risky, just an opinion of course.

Regards Eileen Regan

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I agree that it might be risky for an asthma sufferer to go anywhere but WAY out in the countryside in China---I was in Kunming and one of my American colleagues quit jogging early in the morning because she started coughing blood and could relate it to nothing but the air quality. I would consult that latest edition of "China Bound" because the first one was pretty comprehensive about medical care. Also I think I would get some information from CDC(Communicable Disease Center) in Atlanta--or maybe the State Department could help. So many people, including those who've only travelled in China for relatively short periods, get respiratory infections or have problems--I'd venture to guess that they outnumber gastrointestinal or any other ones.

Nancy Hilty

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On Health Insurance:

What you choose to do depends on your own level of medical insurance comfort. I have relied solely on the college's coverage and have never had any problems. True, nothing serious has happened, but for the occasional scrapes, bruises, colds, flus, or food-related illnesses, the school coverage is adequate. I have had a couple of bad flus and a few basketball-related treatments (a bad knee which swells up after so many hours of basketball), and all were swiftly and expertly handled by the waiban and medical staff. Too, the cost of medical care here is, I don't know, 1/10th of what it is in the states. The first time I went to the school infirmary with a swollen knee, the cost of the doctors exam and the medication - a bottle of conventional pain-killing pills and a jar full of Chinese medicinal treatment (small round balls that feel, look and taste not unlike ostrich droppings) - came to about 30 RMB ($3.75 US) which was paid for by the school (the school infirmary charged the school's foreign affairs dept.). The same treatment (medical clinic admission, doctor exam and medication) in the States would have probably run about $150 US). And I'll tell you, those "ostrich droppings" really work.

So, from my viewpoint, the school coverage is adequate. But my comfort level may not be the same as yours, or others. In 20 years of med coverage in the U.S. I probably made 3 claims the whole time. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about illness-but that's just me. Anyway, it's an individual decision. I just wanted to give you one take on it from the "minimalist" point of view. Others will have different views, I'm sure.

°¬ÎÄÁú
Chuck (in China)

My husband suffered a severe attack of gout which was quickly identified by a Chinese doctor at the #1 hospital in Fuzhou, though at the time gout was practically unheard of in China. He was able to get medicine imported from Eastern Europe throughout our two-year stay; when we moved to a distant city in our second year, his doctor wrote a letter of introduction to a colleague there. None of this cost us anything. Our school covered all costs related to hospitalization (but maybe this part has changed in the last ten years). The same doctor also introduced us to a dentist, using one of his precious days off to accompany us for a personal introduction.

Likewise, we had no trouble in finding good medical care for our infant daughter. Though emergency rooms look appallingly filthy and the grounds are filled with hospital laundry spread out to dry on every available bush and people are sorting through the trash for whatever can be recycled as fast as it comes down the chute, there is actually a much lower rate of post-operative infection in China than in the U.S.

We found doctors and nurses, of both Western and traditional medicine, to be very caring, and very eager to socialize with us as well, in order to improve their English in order to better read professional journals.

--Peg Orleans

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