Asia Journalist

Drug Costs Putting Young Lives at Risk

Li Defang remembers the day she considered giving up on her granddaughter — a four-year-old battling leukemia. 

Money had dried up, and little Zhao Jing was in a hospital in Hefei city in eastern China. She was struggling, feverish and coping with an infection. In those desperate hours back in October 2014, Li recalls whispering sadly to her: “If one day grandma runs out of money for your medicines, maybe I will have to abandon you.”

Such life-and-death calculations aren’t that rare in a China that is home to the world’s largest number of cancer cases, and where patients can sometimes pay among the highest prices in the world for drug treatments. For the past year, Li and her granddaughter have lived in a slum near the hospital. Called Wujianong, the tenement is home to about thirty other families who have also journeyed hundreds of miles to seek better care for their sick children. Here they live in damp, moldy rooms just off a narrow street strewn with plastic bags and muddy puddles. They’ve all found that cancer can be a financial catastrophe in a society where private insurance is a rarity and many costs for serious illnesses aren’t covered by government insurance.

Surging health-care costs are turning into one of the biggest threats to the world’s second largest economy and its consumers. About $115 billion will be spent on pharmaceuticals in China this year. As patients struggle to pay, international drug companies face slower growth in the country and government pressure to curb prices. For families, their biggest adversary isn’t only the disease, but the prohibitive cost of care. 

Read the whole article and see more pictures on Bloomberg News:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-12-15/the-children-of-china-s-cancer-slum-drug-costs-putting-young-lives-at-risk

Qilai Shen is a Shanghai, China based photographer with over 10 years of experience in editorial, corporate, and portrait photography.

Apple Model agency opened the world’s first transgender division this year, but these girls have long been standing up for their beliefs – no matter the cost

Apple models has been going for thirteen years, but this year opened the world’s first transgender division. “It’s good news,” says Noam Lev, co-director of Bangkok’s Apple Model agency. “Some of our transgender girls have had problems with their passports; you have a beautiful woman turn up at airport immigration and their photo, maybe taken years before, is of a guy. So even being able to address that issue officially is another step in the right direction.”

But while the fashion industry, (and the rest of the world), seemingly takes leaps forward in terms of trans acceptance, signing transgender models is just another day at the office for many Bangkok based modelling agencies. “It’s not a new thing here in Bangkok – many of the agencies have had trans models but they’ve always been pushed as girls, so the clients would never know. If a model became very successful, then it was easier for them to come out, but otherwise they were always in hiding. What we’re doing is being upfront: We tell the girls that we represent them as who they are.”

Read the whole article and see more pictures on dazed digital:

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/28886/1/be-inspired-by-these-thai-transgender-models-stories

Shiraz Randeria is a freelance editorial and creative director working for magazines and fashion clients. He is based between London, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Zheng Qing was devastated when she heard the news last month that China will scrap the one-child policy. It was too late to have a second child. She thought it was a great honour to follow the one child policy at that time but now feels the rule has let her down badly.

She and her husband are among more than a million grieving Chinese parents who have lost the only child that the government allowed them to have. 

Zheng’s husband, Fan Guohi, 56, has petitioned the government to give „shidu“ parents, those who have lost their only child, both moral and financial support. Their son died from a car accident in 2012. His loss left the couple „emotionally ruined“, Zheng said.

„One-child families are walking a tightrope,“ Fan said. „Once you lose your child, you lose all hope.“

Read the whole article and see more pictures on Wider Image Reuters:

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/china-when-an-only-child-dies

„Kim Kyung-Hoon studied photojournalism at a university in South Korea before beginning his career at a local newspaper. In 2002 he joined Reuters‘ bureau in Seoul as a staff photographer and is currently based in Beijing after working for six years in the Tokyo bureau. He has covered a range of stories from the daily spot news, political news and disaster stories to sports events.“

Wider Image: In-depth visual reports from across the world by Reuters, the world’s largest news agency. Updated daily with new stories.

While China’s economic downturn is providing some respite from the labor crunch, Crystal’s blue-jeans factory here still pays 20% above the market rate. It organizes cooking classes and singing contests to keep workers happy. 

Last month, China announced it was abolishing its decades-old policy restricting most couples to one child. But that won’t likely put much of a dent in the country’s looming demographic problem because relatively few Chinese prefer to have more than one child, economists note—and it will be at least 16 years before any additional babies make it to the job market.

Fearing that China will see an exodus of manufacturers, Chinese Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping last year called for “an industrial robot revolution” in China, which has become the world’s largest market for automation.

Looking ahead to 2050, the future appears mixed for consumers around the globe. Low-cost production in China has helped suppress inflation in the U.S., Europe and at home. It is an open question whether automation can hold down costs as effectively as Chinese peasant labor did. But consumers should look forward to more choice, faster delivery and, perhaps, less harm to the environment. (By KATHY CHU and BOB DAVIS for WSJ)

The whole article and more pictures on Wall Street Journal:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-chinas-workforce-dwindles-the-world-scrambles-for-alternatives-1448293942

Gilles Sabrié is an editorial, portrait and corporate  photographer based in Beijing.
He has worked for over a decade in East and South-East Asia, documenting the staggering change the region has been going through. His work has been published in numerous publications worldwide, among many others, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Time magazine, Geo, National,  Geographic, Der Spiegel, L’Espresso, The Observer, The Guardian… His corporate clients include among others, Apple, Nestlé, Mc Kinsey…