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In an interview with P.H., Dr. John Macalister, former CEO and director of AquaBiotronic, called the water shortage "China's greatest vulnerability." Dr. Macalister has spent the last decade in China, advocating the use of biotechnologies to efficiently recycle waste water. Sadly, his warning calls have fallen on deaf ears. Despite the enormous impact of the water crisis on both China and the world, political and business circles remain trapped in what Dr. Macalister terms a "paralysis of will." In ten years, Dr. Macalister has not found a single client in China. He plans to leave the nation soon.
Few Chinese politicians or businessmen demonstrate any interest in more creative technological solutions like the ones AquaBiotronic promotes. Since healthcare became decentralized in the 1980s, the Chinese government has failed to provide for the health of its rural citizens. Healthcare coverage rates remain abysmally low: 7 percent for all of rural China, and 3 percent for the Chinese West, where Chunhua is located. According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. David Blumenthal and Dr. William Hsiao, low health expenditures are the leading cause of poverty in China. The government recognizes that they have a problem, but they have responded to the water emergency with inefficient remedies and piecemeal solutions. Unfortunately for China, threats like SARS and avian fl u will not respect the timelines set by drawn-out processes of legislation and implementation.
Hand-washing remains one of the few ways to decrease the transmission of SARS and avian fl u. Given that 40 percent of China's population cannot afford out-of-pocket hospital care even for basic treatments, hand-washing should be considered a crucial preventative health measure. Treating avian fl u with anti-virals is expensive, and these drugs are not readily available. During the height of the SARS epidemic, local officials hastily constructed hygiene promotion programs, but few survived to become sustainable education initiatives. In Chunhua, elementary school teachers told P.H. that national officials had rushed to promote hygiene programs during the SARS epidemic. Once the threat of SARS had passed, the teachers admitted, the programs disappeared.