Regulation on Human Organ Transplantation<\/em>, adopted in 2007 by the State Council \u2013 China\u2019s chief administrative authority \u2013 stipulates that, \u201cThe donation of human organs shall be made under the principle of free will and free of charge,\u201d and that trades in human organs are forbidden. Regardless, people in China can receive large sums of money for the \u201cdonated\u201d organs of their deceased relatives, as proves the story which a woman from a village<\/a> in northern China recounted to Bitter Winter. <\/em>Since she requested anonymity, we will call her Ms. Jiang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A year ago, Ms. Jiang\u2019s husband, who was partially paralyzed, was hospitalized when his condition started deteriorating. After a week in the hospital, the man suffered a stroke, and doctors said there was nothing they could do about it: he will remain in a vegetative state for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI collected money from everyone I could for his treatment. I asked the attending doctor if my husband had any chance to recuperate at home, but instead of giving me a definite answer, he kept repeating that my husband\u2019s condition was very bad,\u201d Ms. Jiang remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Without clear answers, Ms. Jiang was scared to discharge her husband from the hospital. During the next few days, the doctor approached Ms. Jiang on several occasions, informing her about the new procedure in the Red Cross Hospital of Tianjin, a metropolis on the Bohai Sea, which supposedly provides free treatment for critical patients like her husband. This possibility was the only ray of hope for Ms. Jiang, who was too poor to afford the treatment her husband needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The doctor said that he was willing to help Ms. Jiang to contact the Red Cross Hospital, but only if she accepted the conditions \u2013 if the treatment failed, her husband\u2019s organs should be donated in exchange for monetary compensation. To be admitted there, her husband had to be discharged from the hospital he was in, give up the treatment he was receiving, and wait until he is accepted at the Red Cross Hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought it would be better to accept the doctor\u2019s advice than to watch my husband dying in pain because I had no money to help him,\u201d Ms. Jiang told Bitter Winter<\/em>. \u201cWithout further consideration, I asked the hospital to discharge my husband. Three days later, an ambulance was sent to our home. The attending doctor assured me that it was from the Red Cross Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOn the way to the hospital, my husband kept his eyes open and breathed normally. He looked well,\u201d the woman continued her story. \u201cWhen we passed Beijing, the ambulance stopped at a secluded place, and several people got into it. One of them said he was an anesthetist. They asked me to wait in another vehicle while they were examining my husband.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The examination lasted for about two hours, after which Ms. Jiang was allowed to get back into the ambulance. \u201cMy husband\u2019s eyes were closed, and a tube was connected to his mouth \u2013 one of the people told me that it was a respirator. I suddenly felt sad and didn\u2019t ask much,\u201d the woman still vividly remembers the feeling she had when she saw her husband. She didn\u2019t know then that she would never see her husband opening his eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At 10 p.m., they arrived at a hospital in Tianjin: but it was the First Central, not the Red Cross Hospital. Ms. Jiang\u2019s husband was placed in an intensive care unit. She was not allowed to take care of him and was sent to a hotel instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tianjin First Central Hospital boasts for being the largest organ transplantation hospital in Asia. Bitter Winter<\/em> has previously reported that Mr. Kim Hyeoncheol, a South Korean TV reporter, conducted undercover investigations in this hospital<\/a>, disclosing that patients had to wait as little as two weeks for a new organ and that a liver transplant would typically cost about $ 170,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the third day at the hospital, a doctor asked Ms. Jiang to sign a few-page document, which she didn\u2019t understand completely. \u201cI was distraught and felt ignorant. The doctor just told me that by signing, I agree to donate my husband\u2019s organs if the treatment fails,\u201d Ms. Jiang said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon after she signed the documents, her husband\u2019s condition began to worsen. \u201cThe next morning, my husband was declared dead, and the hospital took his organs. I still don\u2019t know if he was alive or dead when his organs were harvested,\u201d Ms. Jiang said with pain. \u201cHis body was fully covered when they took him out of the operation room. I was not even told how many organs had been harvested from his body.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The woman remembered that the doctor who made her sign the document once hinted that his husband\u2019s corneas, liver, and kidneys were suitable for transplantation. The same doctor transferred 150,000 RMB (about $ 21,000) to her bank account afterward. She never received any records about her husband\u2019s organ transplantation, only his hospitalization and medical reports, hospital charges, and his death certificate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Jiang now realizes that the promise to give her husband the treatment he needed was a hoax to harvest his organs. But a simple farmer like Ms. Jiang can do nothing about it in China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A woman from northern China shares a tragic story of how doctors promised to help her ill husband, but she was lured into agreeing to donate his organs instead. by Wang Gong Regulation on Human Organ Transplantation, adopted in 2007 by the State Council \u2013 China\u2019s chief administrative authority \u2013 stipulates that, \u201cThe donation of […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"tpgb_global_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"tpgb_featured_images":{"full":["https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tianjin-First-Central-Hospital.jpg",640,360,false],"tp-image-grid":["https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tianjin-First-Central-Hospital.jpg",640,360,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tianjin-First-Central-Hospital-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tianjin-First-Central-Hospital-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tianjin-First-Central-Hospital.jpg",640,360,false],"large":["https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tianjin-First-Central-Hospital.jpg",640,360,false],"default":"https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/wp-content\/plugins\/the-plus-addons-for-block-editor\/assets\/images\/tpgb-placeholder.jpg"},"tpgb_post_meta_info":{"get_date":"March 10, 2020","get_modified_date":"March 10, 2020","category_list":{"category":[{"term_id":19,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":19,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":238,"filter":"raw"}],"post_tag":false,"post_format":false},"author_name":"Hope To Heal","author_url":"https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/author\/hope2233\/","author_email":"webmaster@hopetoheal.org.za","author_website":"","author_description":"Our mission is for women and children to live free from violence and abuse and to provide quality, compassionate, and nonjudgmental services in a manner that fosters self-respect and independence in persons experiencing domestic violence and child abuse and to lead the struggle to end domestic violence through advocacy and community education.","author_facebook":"","author_twitter":"","author_instagram":"","author_role":["administrator"],"author_firstname":"Hope To","author_lastname":"Heal Foundation","user_login":"Hope2233","author_avatar":"Hopeless diagnosis, and then \u2013 a promise of hope<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Mysterious examination in an ambulance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Tianjin](\"https:\/\/bitterwinter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Tianjin-First-Central-Hospital.jpg\")
Death instead of treatment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
