The Jinshan District government and Red Cross Society opened a special foundation for leukemia patients yesterday in the district.
It is the first district-level red cross society to set up a foundation for leukemia patients.
"In the past, we didn't have any special foundations for any group. We help anyone who is in need," said Xue Meihua, the director of the Jinshan District Red Cross Society.
But in our work to help Yang Bing, a leukemia patient in our district, we found those patients are in great need of money, especially when they find a matching bone marrow donor, Xue said.
Yang, 23, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001.
While he found a matching bone marrow through Taiwan's Tzu Chi Bone Marrow Bank in July, he and his family can't afford to pay for the procedure.
A bone marrow transplant costs around 400,000 yuan (US$48,193), according to doctors at the No. 1 People's Hospital in Zhejiang Province, which helped find the matching marrow donor and will perform Yang's surgery.
At a launching ceremony for the foundation yesterday, companies and individuals voluntarily donated 43,560 yuan.
"The money will be used to help Yang," Xue said. "But Yang is not the only one who will benefit from this foundation."
We set up the foundation in order to ask more people to care for leukemia patients,'' Xue added.