China works to free Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of endemics

Source: Xinhua | 03-12-2009 08:15

CHENGDU, March 11 (Xinhua) -- With his sons at a boarding school dozens of kilometers away, Qumochung can see them only once every several months. But the 37-year-old Tibetan villager considers the reluctant choice worthwhile.

"Only if they can be spared of the horrible disease," said Qumochung, referring to an incurable endemic bone disease to which he himself also falls a victim.

In Basheng village of Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province, where Qumochung resides, the Kaschin-Beck disease haunts. It causes painful swelling in joints and retards limb growth, resulting in dwarfism in the most severe cases.

Aba, located on the southeastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and with 55 percent ethnic Tibetans among its population, has reported the highest incidence of Kaschin-Beck in China since the disease was diagnosed there in the 1950s. About one-fifth of the prefecture's villages are located in regions susceptible to the ailment. The patients were counted as more than 40,000.