YONG’AN VILLAGE, China — At the height of the corn harvest in the muggy days of August, 10-month-old Zhang Peng began refusing to drink his milk, crying at night as he struggled to sleep. Soon his twin sister, Zhang Xue, fell ill too.
Several times, their parents brought the sick babies, who had trouble urinating, to the nearest hospital 20 miles from their farming village. Doctors could not diagnose the problem but gave the children herbal powder and injections.
Then last month, Chinese media revealed that infant formula contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical used to make fertilizer and plastics, was sickening babies nationwide.
The news shocked the Zhang family and so began a month- long ordeal that would see them shuttling back and forth between their home in Shandong province and a hospital in Beijing, 450 miles away.
“We had no idea what was wrong. We were so frightened and worried,” the children’s mother, Liao Shanfang, told The Associated Press last week from the family’s house in this village in eastern China’s corn belt. “Even when I saw the news that milk powder had been poisoned, I could not believe it. We never imagined that would be the problem.”
Amid China’s worst food- safety crisis in years, thousands of parents have jammed into hospital emergency rooms. More than 50,000 children have been treated for kidney ailments, and nearly 6,000 remain hospitalized, the Health Ministry said. Four deaths have been linked to the toxic milk.
After the tainted-milk scandal broke in mid-September, Liao and her husband, Zhang Rongwei, took their twins yet again to their local hospital in Linyi. This time, Zhang Peng, the boy, was admitted for a five-day stay, but he only got worse. He began vomiting, and when he could urinate, it came out in a thin, blood-tinged stream. His sister’s symptoms weren’t as serious; she had sporadic fevers.
From birth, both babies had been given breast milk and formula. The Zhangs first used a cheaper brand that gave the children diarrhea, then switched to one made by Sanlu Group Co. It cost almost twice as much.
Sanlu was the first company implicated in the scandal, going public with word of contamination Sept. 11, and the Chinese government later confirmed it was widespread.
Doctors in Linyi told the Zhangs to seek treatment in Beijing. The couple hastily arranged for a car ride — at a cost of 300 yuan, about $45, a small fortune — to the Children’s Hospital in the capital, where they arrived Sept. 23.
Hours later, Zhang Peng was diagnosed with two large kidney stones that needed surgery. His sister had a single stone the size of a grain of rice — not serious enough to warrant a hospital stay.
With no choice but to split their lives — and their children — the couple brought their daughter home to her paternal grandmother. Then they returned to Beijing, where they spent the next three weeks.
Despite the weeks of heartache, the twins, who turn 1 this month, are recovering. Zhang Peng was discharged from the hospital Monday; his sister was treated with a remedy prescribed by a traditional Chinese medicine doctor. The toddlers still drink milk but only brands unaffected by the scandal, although they cost nearly five times what Sanlu milk cost.
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China adopts relaxed regulations for journalists
BEIJING — China took a further step toward opening itself to the world, announcing Friday that an easing of restrictions on foreign journalists enacted for the Olympics would become permanent.
Premier Wen Jiabao signed the decree, which took immediate effect, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao at a news conference. Under the new regulations, which had been anticipated by journalists, foreign reporters would not be required to get government permission to travel within the country or to interview Chinese citizens.
“This is not only a big step forward for China in opening up to the outside world, it is also a big step for further facilitating reporting activities by foreign journalists,” Liu said.
China had loosened its decades-old controls on foreign reporters, which included requiring government permission for all interviews and travel, at the beginning of 2007. The changes were part of the Communist country’s pledge to increase media freedom, which helped Beijing’s bid to host the 2008 Olympics. The Olympic rules were set to expire at midnight Friday.
Even under the relaxed rules, foreign journalists and monitoring groups complained that Chinese authorities still harassed and occasionally detained journalists in the run-up to the Olympics. During the Games, there were at least 30 cases of reporting interference, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club of China.
The Associated Press
