Peng Shaoxing, a vice director from Henan Provincial Trade Unions, has told local media that HPTU has attached great importance to the lung checkup of the migrant worker Zhang Haichao and has initiated an investigation on the issue.

Peng said that Zhang still needs to undergo some appraisals at designated institutions and once he is verified as having an occupational disease, HPTU would actively assist him in protecting his rights and interests.

Peng said that HPTU has delegated the health department in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province, to appraise the Zhang Haichao's ailment and would decide on a corresponding solution according to the result of the appraisal.

Believing that he might have contracted pneumoconiosis after working for more than three years as a crusher and presser driver, the 28-year old Zhang have been going to hospitals in different places — including Zhengzhou and Beijing — to verify his guess. After his requests for help were fruitless, and against his doctors' advice, Zhang insisted on having chest surgery to check his lung and to prove that he had really had the disease. Unable to pay his medical expenses he was discharged from hospital on July 1, 2009 having been diagnosed as suffering from pneumoconiosis combined with a lung infection.

At present, it takes a long time to diagnose, assess and make a ruling an
occupational diseases and even work-related injury in China; and it then may take a long time for the victim to get the compensation. Besides the complicated procedures required, one of the complications is that the health department often asks the patient who want to check for vocational disease to present a certificate from their employer on the work they do before issuing them a diagnosis (this is often impossible). Zhang is one of the examples of thousands of Chinese migrant workers who are suffering from vocational disease, but the only difference between him and others is that he is courageous enough to take the risk to his life to have his "chest opened" to find the truth about his disease. This is why he has received so much attention from the media and the public and finally drawn the attention of the government departments. Even though, it is still unknow how long it will take before he can finally get an official appraisal on his disease from the designated medical institutions according to the designated procedures.

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