By Xinhua writer Liu Jie

    SHENYANG, April 21 (Xinhua) -- One night this spring, a couple from central China's Hubei Province, Chen Zhengxian and his wife Yao Yuanxiang, tied themselves together and drowned themselves in the Yangtze River.

    Chen, a farmer from Gongan County, was suffering from snail fever and hepatitis B and Yao was tormented by sciatica. Medical bills were mounting and life savings had been exhausted. They saw suicide as their only escape route and left behind their ten-year-old son, also a hepatitis B sufferer.

    The tragedy reflects the grim reality that hundreds of millions of people in rural China do not have access to affordable healthcare. The Chinese government initiated rural cooperative medical services in 20 provinces four years ago but is now coming under pressure to advance the program, which is still unable to meet the rural population's needs.

    Under the cooperative scheme, a participant pays 10 yuan (1.3 U.S. dollars) a year, while the state, provincial, municipal and county governments supply another 40 yuan (5.2 U.S. dollars) to the fund. Contributors are then entitled to discounts, provided by the fund, on their medical expenses.

    But residents in Chen's village believe the couple would have taken the same course of action even if they had been members of a rural cooperative scheme. The money they needed had far exceeded any possibility of an adequate refund.

    "With an average reimbursement rate for hospital fees only standing at a meagre 27.5 percent, the current subsidies are still utterly inadequate in dealing with grave and terminal diseases," said Wu Ming, professor with the Medical School of Peking University.

    Farmer Ma Yongshan, in Beipiao County of northeast China's Liaoning Province, was stricken by colon cancer and a brain infarction. He received a reimbursement of 6,590 yuan for his hospital fees after joining the scheme.

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