A Chinese man is calling on the World Health Organization to investigate the death of his wife, who allegedly died from unsafe injections prescribed by a Chinese hospital. He is appealing to the UN agency to help end the widespread medical malpractice in China.
Zhihua Yan, together with his daughter Xiaoyan Yan, submitted his complaint letter and evidence materials to the World Health Organization (WHO) in November 2018 and then again in April this year.
In the letter, Yan said his wife Xiuming Tan died half a year after receiving traditional Chinese medicine injections, or TCM injections.
Tan was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2016 and decided not to receive chemotherapy. In October 2016, Tan checked in to Fuling Central Hospital of Chongqing City in China for glucose and amino acid injections, since she had been feeling weak and wanted some nutritional support.
But instead of giving her glucose or amino acid, the hospital prescribed the more expensive safflower yellow injections, a type of TCM injection.
Though the Chinese have used orally-taken traditional medicine and successfully cured many diseases for centuries, making injectable drugs with the same recipes is a modern practice with only decades of history.
In spite of the thousands of adverse reactions every year, the TCM injection is still a billion-dollar industry in China and it’s barely regulated due to its huge profitability.
One of the worst cases of the adverse effect caused by TCM injections happened in 2006, when at least 44 people were killed from the injections of Houttuynia cordata, a herb also known as fish mint.
Xiaoyan Yan’s daughter said the label on the solution says the medicine is for treatment of stable angina, a type of chest pain. Yan said her mother did not suffer from stable angina.
Yan said the day Tan received the injection, she began vomiting and suffered a severe headache. After the family reported Tan’s condition to the hospital, the hospital prescribed more TCM injections and told them that Tan’s worsening condition was caused by her cancer, not the injections.
Yan said over the 20 days that she received the injections, her mother turned from suffering weakness to constant vomiting, inability to eat or drink, clouded consciousness, and incontinence; none of which she experienced before the injections.
Her family then had Tan transferred to another department in the hospital and ceased the injections—only then did Tan’s vomiting subside.
Yan said she made several phone calls to the WHO’s New York and Geneva offices earlier this month. She said, “Till now, we haven’t received any response from the World Health Organization. We don’t know whether they will launch an investigation of our complaint or not.”
The Yans have made every attempt to request an investigation from health departments within China, but received no response. Their appeal in the United States is their hope for the thousands of others still at risk of meeting a similar fate as Tan.
“We hope to expose this dark medical industry chain condoned by the Chinese regime,” said Yan. “We call on the UN and WHO to investigate and stop this crime against humanity.”
