Health or death for China's mountain children(2)

Scattered and secluded in the mountains, road access to many of the mountain villages in Muli Tibetan Autonomous County of Liangshan where Han's village is located is impossible.

Delivering medicine to these areas is costly and complicated, sometimes reaching as high as 2,000 yuan ($323 US Dollars), several months' wages, for a single box of medicine.

It is even harder to see a doctor. There are stories of villagers climbing across the mountains on all fours to access the nearby town where the clinic is located.

In many cases, folk remedies have taken the place of medicine, and local priests chanting sutras have taken the place of doctors.

While Ma is still surviving, this is not the case for an 8-month-year-old girl in the village, who, after being improperly diagnosed with food poisoning, died as a result being mistreated with folk medicine.

"She had loose bowel movements for more than a month," Padma Khamtrul, the 35-year-old village doctor, recalls.

With her parents away working on a farm and her grandparents too old to make the trip, they were unable to give the child proper treatment at a clinic.

"At first her grandparents thought it was food poisoning and gave her wild pepper, which they believed was the antidote. Then she was fed with bulrush."

"The baby finally died, two days before her one-year birthday."

LOCAL EFFORTS

To battle the harsh living conditions of rural children, the government initiated a new rural medical care system which was extended to Muli in 2009.

Starting from 2011, mothers receive 75 percent of their children's medical costs back.

The initiative has brought in several more patients from the surrounding area, says Druma, a doctor with the People's Hospital of Muli county, the Tibetan county where Tangyang village is located.