Patients waited for their medicine at Wuhan Institute of Dermatology and Venereology.
China has poured doctors, drugs and other resources into Hubei province to battle the coronavirus outbreak at its source, but people with other conditions are struggling to get the urgent medical attention they need.
Overburdened hospitals have turned away some pregnant women with complications. People with HIV have run short of essential drugs.
Tracking the Coronavirus
- The death toll is more than 2,000.
- In mainland China, 74,185 people have been confirmed infected.
- A two-week general quarantine aboard a virus-stricken cruise ship ended and some passengers started to disembark.
Wan Ruyi, a 21-year-old college student in Wuhan with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, has been seeking a new round of treatment and ultimately a bone-marrow transplant. For those, she needs to move to a hospital in northern Hebei province, said her mother, Wu Qiong.
Yet Ms. Wan is spending her days lying on a bed at Wuhan Union Hospital. She is unable to leave Wuhan as the city has barred people from leaving. She relies on chemotherapy injections and painkillers, the only treatments the hospital can offer for her condition.
Ms. Wan has been suffering from excruciating pain, so bad that she even questioned whether she wanted to keep living, her mother said. “I feel there is no other way out” besides going to Hebei, she said. “The only road is now blocked by this huge disaster.”
With public transportation down, a brother and sister could only push their mother in a wheelchair to reach the hospital. They were later turned away because staff were busy dealing with coronavirus cases.
The new coronavirus, which causes an acute respiratory disease called Covid-19, has killed more than 2,000 globally, mostly in Hubei province. To combat the epidemic, authorities have directed medical resources to the front line. That means many hospitals have suspended regular services.
Wuhan’s health authorities have recently designated several hospitals for noncoronavirus patients. Volunteers and individuals who are eager to help also have been emerging.
Yet access remains a challenge for many due to the continued shortage of medical staff and beds and the prolonging of increasingly stricter lockdown rules in the region.
In Wuhan, Katy Liang, a pregnant 35-year-old, suffers from an immune-system disorder called antiphospholipid syndrome that increases the risk of blood clots. She also has a higher risk of a miscarriage, which she has already experienced.
To lower that risk, Ms. Liang takes blood-thinning enoxaparin injections and aspirin pills twice a day along with other drugs, dosages of which must be adjusted frequently by doctors. But her hospital had halted outpatient visits.
The situation has pressured Ms. Liang not only physically but also mentally, depriving her of sleep. “I cried out loud several times at home, for my city and for my baby,” she said last month.
More recently, Ms. Liang has been relying for advice on a volunteer group that was formed in early February to help about 500 pregnant women secure access to medical advice, hospitals and vehicles. Shen Xu, who heads the group, said it has helped 35 mothers deliver babies.
Meanwhile, roadblocks and checkpoints intended to keep the virus from spreading are obstructing people from obtaining needed medication.
Mason Chen, a 23-year-old HIV-positive shop owner who lives in eastern Zhejiang province, has been back home in the rural area of Xiaogan for a family reunion. The city in Hubei has been locked down by authorities, blocking Mr. Chen from leaving.
Living with HIV for three years, Mr. Chen punctually takes his prescribed pills twice a day, at 10 a.m and 10 p.m. For this trip, he had brought 17 days’ supply of drugs, an amount that he could hide from his parents. But he was starting to run low.
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To get the medicine, he would have to get out of the neighborhood in the outskirts of Xiaogan—a challenge, given tight movement control imposed by the local government. He felt he risked letting people in this small community know about his condition.
“After all, people in the countryside definitely would not be able to accept this disease,” he said.
One early morning around 3 a.m., Mr. Chen tried to sneak out of his village to go to the nearest downtown hospital. He was caught by several patrolling villagers and nearly got beaten up for wandering furtively around at night.
In despair, Mr. Chen decided to seek help from the local police, despite his concern about his secret becoming known. Luckily, the police officer kept quiet and helped him obtain his medicines. By then, Mr. Chen only had one day’s supply of drugs remaining.
Mr Xu held out medicine for his HIV. With his supplies dwindling, a volunteer drove him to one of the few hospitals in Wuhan that had life-saving drugs.
Others rely on volunteers.
One cold, drizzly day this month, volunteer Zhou Jun drove his car to pick up a young HIV-positive man to take him to one of the few hospitals in Wuhan that had supplies of antiretroviral drugs.
The 24-year-old patient, whose family name is Xu, had been stuck at home for weeks and only had two more days’ supply of pills remaining. Public transportation to reach his hospital has been cut off, and private cars have been largely banned from the streets without a special permit.
Mr. Xu, who declined to give his first name due to privacy concerns, found Mr. Zhou, a volunteer driver whose day job is as a university lecturer, through Wuhan LGBT Center.
They waited for two hours at Wuhan Institute of Dermatology and Venereology since the doctor in charge wasn’t on duty. After multiple calls to a provincial government official, he finally received official approval for the hospital to release the medicine.
The Chinese Center of Disease Control and Prevention urged local health authorities last month to ensure HIV-positive people receive medical supplies. Yet in practice, this requires paperwork and inconvenient phone calls.
Huang Haojie, director of Wuhan LGBT Center, blamed a continued lack of coordination between hospitals and governments. “It shouldn’t be like this,” he said.
—Yoko Kubota, Chao Deng, Yin Yijun and Raffaele Huang
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