Pu Mengqi was just one month away from graduation at college in Suzhou - 50km inland from Shanghai - when she was diagnosed with leukaemia, in May 2006. She underwent the first round of treatment before moving to Beijing with her parents for better care at the capital's prestigious Daopei Hospital. Chemotherapy made her lose her hair and appetite but doctors said her chances of recovery were good. Then, on June 28 last year, she was given a spinal injection of tainted medicine that caused her to lose control of her legs, her bladder and her bowels. Unlike her hair and appetite, that control will never return.
Pu is just one victim of what is emerging as one of China's worst reported medical scandals. Over a period of two months last summer, nearly 200 leukaemia patients were treated with an anti-cancer drug contaminated during manufacture at a subsidiary of one of the country's biggest pharmaceutical groups. This number would have been much smaller were it not for an attempted cover-up by managers at the firm, Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical. All the victims have lost the ability to walk normally. Most are paralysed from the waist down. Once the media coverage has subsided, they will probably be forgotten; poorly compensated, they will struggle through a life of destitution and disability.
The affair is a painful reminder of how far the mainland is from building a system that can ensure the safety of the medicine it makes and supplies. In several cases over the past few years, scores of people in China and abroad have had their health damaged - often fatally - by using drugs and drug ingredients produced on the mainland. Last July, the seriousness of the situation was underlined by the execution of a former food and drug regulator. Zheng Xiaoyu had been found guilty of taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies, when head of the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), in return for granting licences to supply medicines to mainland clinics and hospitals.
Ironically, it was just as Zheng was being put to death that Shanghai Hualian's poisoned drugs started to take effect. The company is part of the giant state-owned Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group, which has supplied ingredients to, or set up joint ventures with, foreign multinationals, including Swiss-based Roche. In addition to anti-cancer drugs, Hualian produces hormones and pharmaceuticals used in birth control at three plants around Shanghai. These are sold domestically and exported to 70 countries, according to the company website. Many are sold under the brand name Sanjian, which means 'triple health'.
A search of the Department of Health's database found that no pharmaceuticals supplied by either Shanghai Hualian or Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group are registered for sale in Hong Kong. Neither company responded to requests for an interview from Post Magazine.
FROM HER HOSPITAL room in the west of Beijing, Pu, now 22, tells of her life-destroying encounter with the chemotherapy drug methotrexate. The ward has been her home since shortly after she was injected. Evening sunlight seeps into the dingy room, illuminating her smooth, hairless head and the wall behind. Beside her bed, a bag of lychees and a flask of oolong tea sit on top of a grey metal cabinet.
