A proposal to set up a medical fund in Guangzhou to help children diagnosed with serious illnesses was submitted to the city's current session of the CPPCC.

The fund, designed along the lines of one in Shanghai's, would charge 30 to 50 yuan (US$6.04) per child per year and cover most medical fees for children with leukemia, tumors or heart disease.

Yan Haoheng, 4, was diagnosed with leukemia at a Guangzhou hospital last August. Treatment during the past six months had cost his family more than 100,000 yuan and they would be forced to sell their house to continue treatment for the child.

Of all children diagnosed with Mediterranean anemia in the city, less than 15 percent were cured with stem cell transplants. The rest are treated with blood transfusions until they die, usually in their teens.

Only 10 percent of children with leukemia are treated in hospital across the country. Most families have given up because of the crippling costs. In China, children are excluded from the social medicare system while commercial insurance often refuses to cover patients with cancer, blood diseases, mental disorders or other chronic diseases.

The fund program, proposed by Huang Nanbing, would cover a small part of the outpatient fees for those under 19 and was chiefly designed to help children with serious diseases, Huang said. Huang also suggested an independent department to supervise the fund.

In Shanghai, the children's medical fund was founded in 1996 and has paid 410m yuan for 558,000 hospitalized children. The fund covers more than 95 percent of children in Shanghai. Last September, some 60,000 migrant children were also covered by the fund. Beijing and Qingdao have launched similar funds following Shanghai's example. Other cities like Wuhan, Chengdu, Jinan and Suzhou are also drawing up plans for children's medical funds.

Editor: Catherine