A nurse talks with a child of the Qiong ethnic group, who just had a surgical operation for congenital heart disease, at the Chengdu Military General Hospital.[Photo by Huang Zhiling/China Daily]

More than 1,500 children have received free treatment

When Tenzin Rigsang frolics with his friends outside his family home in the Tibet autonomous region, he looks no different from any of his playmates.

Yet the 3-year-old resident of Dianchong village, Lhunzhub county, was diagnosed with congenital heart disease when he was less than 4 months old.

"It was a heavy blow to the family," recalled his mother Chodron Tsomo, who grows highland barley and wheat to supplement her migrant worker husband's salary of less than 2,000 yuan ($300) a month.

"We were desperate as doctors in the county hospital said they could not perform a surgical operation on our son and asked us to take him to seek treatment in a major city. We had no money and did not know what to do."

To make matters worse, the family had been informed that 70 to 75 percent of children with Tenzin's heart condition die before they turn 10.

Then, when he was 6 months old, the county hospital told Chodron that surgeons from the Chengdu Military General Hospital in Sichuan province could carry out the surgery for free.

Five months later, her son had a successful operation and has been healthy ever since, she said.

Tenzin is one of more than 1,500 children with congenital heart disease to have been treated at Chengdu Military General Hospital since 2009, when it began offering free treatment for children from poor areas inhabited by ethnic minorities.

On average, eight out of every 1,000 Chinese children have congenital heart disease. Most live in poor, mountainous areas.