Remember a line from I'm not a medicine man?
"There is only one disease in the world — the disease of poverty."
In real life, examples of those who have been trapped because they have no money for medical treatment still exist.
Dr. Xiaokang recommended a documentary ----- "Miners, Grooms, Pneumoconiosis".
The reason why this documentary has not appeared in any theaters is not the epidemic, but because of its theme, even if there is no epidemic, it is difficult to have a market.
But people who watched this documentary have all scored a high score of 8.7, and were once praised by netizens as: China should have such a documentary, and it also needs such a documentary.
Its theme is also very low-level and unique, mainly to truly record the story of this group of blackmine miners.
The first half of life to take life to pay back, the second half of life but no money to continue life?
The documentary describes the miners who work in the mines, who eat and live in the mountains and shrink in shacks in the winter.
The miners, unequipped at work, bent down into the mine themselves, and kept pounding the ore with a pickaxe.
As a result of the use of cheap explosives, many people either died in mining accidents or were smoked to death by the smoke of poisonous explosives.
Outside the miners were a group of grooms who mainly transported the mines down the hill.
Most of these grooms are former miners who have been sick or injured at work, and sometimes have to transport the remains of workers who died in the mine crash.
With the accumulation of labor, these miners and grooms both suffered from pneumoconiosis.
The so-called pneumoconiosis is mainly caused by occupational activities or long-term inhalation of inorganic mineral dust in the living environment.
This disease is a common occupational disease, generally engaged in coal mining, non-ferrous metal mining and other work, but also an irreversible disease, can not be cured.
One of the old miners was unfortunately suffering from pneumoconiosis.
But there were still two children in the family, and the burden of the whole family was entrusted to the wife. Unfortunately, one of the children was also diagnosed with hypertension, nephritis, and hematuria.
One big and one small, the disease eventually destroyed a family, and this is just the most common one under the mine.
This documentary mainly focuses on the director of the hunan hometown of the farmer Morning Glory, Mafu Jiang Meilin, and the neighboring village of Zhao Pinfeng, a patient with advanced pneumoconiosis, as the protagonists, recording the villagers who are constantly struggling in the big ravines of western Hunan Province, calling on the society to pay attention to the 6 million pneumoconiosis group.
6 million pneumoconiosis patients, how to protect their rights and interests?
According to the data, pneumoconiosis accounts for 90% of all occupational diseases.
Among these pneumoconiosis patients, more than 90% of patients have no savings, nearly 60% are unable to make ends meet, and more than 80% of patients have not applied for statutory workers' compensation.
Therefore, at the two sessions in 2022, the issue of compensation and assistance for pneumoconiosis patients has also been emphasized many times.
As a more harmful occupational disease, the biggest feature of pneumoconiosis is that once it is suffered, it is difficult to heal for life, and it can only be controlled through medical means, alleviating the development of the disease, preventing and treating other complications, and improving the quality of life of patients.
Patients with pneumoconiosis may have symptoms such as cough, dyspnea, chest pain, and sputum production in the early stages. When these symptoms are found, it is recommended that patients treat them in time through drugs or surgery.
1. Surgery
Patients with end-stage stages can be treated with lung transplantation. This method yields a higher survival rate, about 77% at 5 years, although it is more expensive and difficult to find suitable lungs.
2. Medication
There are many ways to treat drugs, including complications and comorbidities, antifibrosis, and whole lung lavage.
Patients with cough symptoms should be treated with cough, sputum, and asthma medications to improve symptoms. Complications and comorbidities of the disease include respiratory infections, chest attacks, respiratory failure, malignant tumors, pulmonary heart disease and COPD, and patients need symptomatic treatment.
In addition to the necessary treatment, the patient usually has to match the corresponding rehabilitation treatment.
According to different conditions, in the individualized treatment of patients, comprehensive pulmonary rehabilitation treatment programs need to be added, such as respiratory muscle training, health education, rational nutrition, etc.
These treatments all revolve around a topic ----- money
As the documentary tells, most of the pneumoconiosis patients are the main labor force of the family, once the disease, not only can not work, but also will cause a greater burden on the family economy, due to illness caused by poverty, the phenomenon of returning to poverty has become common.
In the face of more than 6 million pneumoconiosis patients, many people are facing the dilemma of long-term lack of medical and living double security, due to the lack of labor protection measures, irregular employers, and low coverage of occupational health examinations.
These pneumoconiosis migrant workers, who should have enjoyed the protection of work injury insurance, can only become a special "three no group" in the end, most of them have no labor contract, have not participated in work injury insurance, and have no stable security system.
Even if legal rights protection is adopted, it also faces drawbacks such as "difficulty in collecting evidence and slow litigation".
Zhang Yuanjun, a pneumoconiosis patient in Henan, spent a full 5 years, but before the compensation came down, he died of illness on July 26, 2020.
Therefore, at the two sessions of the National People's Congress, Chen Jingyu, deputy to the National People's Congress, director of the Jiangsu Provincial Lung Transplant Center of Wuxi People's Hospital, and vice president of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, appealed to suggest a liability insurance mechanism for pneumoconiosis.
(Chen Jingyu)
At the same time, it is recommended that the state add --- to the revision of the Law on the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases.
"Employers with high-risk dust operations shall pay pneumoconiosis liability insurance for workers who are exposed to dust operations in accordance with the law".
Although the national occupational protection capacity has been improved, and the working environment for pneumoconiosis has decreased year by year, due to the long incubation period of this disease, even if it starts now, the environment that causes pneumoconiosis will be completely eliminated, but in the next twenty years, there will still be pneumoconiosis patients.
With more than 30 years of rapid urbanization, these people should not become a group of victims, and they cannot fight against diseases in a "naked" way economically.
It is believed that with the continuous improvement of policies, more and more workers can get accurate protection, and the problem of medical insurance costs can be solved.
We hope that in the near future, this pain of breathing will come to an end.
(Some of the pictures are taken from the documentary "Miners, Grooms, Pneumoconiosis")
bibliography:
[1] Ge Junbo,Xu Yongjian,Wang Chen. Internal Medicine[M]. 9th Edition. Beijing:People's Medical Publishing House,2018.]
[2] WANG Yinghua, HE Dongdong, YANG Huan, XU Zhiyong.Epidemiological investigation of pneumoconiosis in Huai'an City, 1976-2020[J].Career and Health,2022,38(02):264-267.