(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-04-26 18:16

CHENGDU - Nearly 77,000 residents of a Tibetan-inhabited region in southwest China will be relocated in a battle against an incurable endemic bone disease that leaves them unable to work and stuck in a life of poverty, according to the local authority.

With an investment of 1.1 billion yuan (US$ 157 million) from the government, a total of 17,067 households in the Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province, will be moved to new homes away from the region prone to Kaschin-Beck disease as of 2013, said He Wentao, an official of Aba's development and reform commission.

New houses are being built for the migrants and water pipes will be paved, a key measure to purify drinking water for farmers and herdsmen who once shared their water with livestock.

It is a new development of the comprehensive scheme aimed at helping 41,184 Kaschin-Beck patients in Aba, most of whom are of Tibetan ethnicity, to get rid of the curse of the endemic disease that bloats the joints, and leads to limb deformity or dwarfism.

Aba has reported the highest Kaschin-Beck incidents in China since the disease was diagnosed there in 1950s.

The endemic disease usually hits people in youth. Most patients will lose work ability when they grow up, and be trapped in a life of poverty.

The local authorities began to move students to schools outside their hometowns in 1996, the first step in the scheme.

So far, the initiative has benefited more than 26,400 students aged between 5 and 15 across the prefecture, according to He Yuan, deputy director of the educational bureau of Aba.

The first group of the pilot students, who are reaching their 20s, have basically got rid of Kaschin-Beck symptoms, said He.

In Nanmuda township, 912 students, 90 percent of whom suffer from the disease, are studying in a boarding school away from their homes in neighboring regions with a monthly meal subsidy of 110 yuan (US$ 15.7) from the government.

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