Medical experts from the Nanfang Hospital, which is affiliated to the First Military Medical University of China, were honored guests at the recent weddings of two men of Xietang Village in south China's Guangdong Province.

This mountain village had once been labeled as the Village Where Men Die Young but experts from Nanfang Hospital had helped the people of the village find out why they kinsfolk had died young. Now all the villagers have been re-housed, leaving behind the conditions that scientific investigation had proven to be so unhealthy.  

Mysterious premature deaths

Xietang Village, located in Yangshan County of Qingyuan City, Guangdong Province, was a place of grinding poverty. A total of 115 people once lived in the village but four of its households had seen no new births in the past 50 years. The population had suffered many years of decline and dropped to just 36 people in seven households.

Most villagers suffered from one disease or another. Here it was commonplace to see men die in their thirties or forties. To the outside world this was the Village Where Men Die Young and its diseases were blamed on hereditary or endemic causes or labeled just plain strange. The girls of the village found it difficult to find a husband from outside while girls from elsewhere were reluctant to marry into the village. The villagers felt trapped and desperate.

Last April, Nanfang Hospital got to know of the mysterious and deadly circumstances of the village and immediately put together a medical taskforce comprising senior staff drawn from no fewer than 14 departments of the hospital. Hospital president Song Yugang took personal charge of the team and left without delay to investigate the case of the unusual premature deaths.

Contaminated water and unhealthy living conditions

Why should so many young men of Xietang suffer infirmity while people living in neighboring villages could expect to enjoy good health? Resolved to sample against every available index of ecological quality, the medical experts visited farmhouses and pigpens alike to look for the answers.

Professor Zhou Dianyuan, 72, a well known expert specializing in disorders of the digestive tract, tested well-water from the village. He found traces of nitrites and manganese exceeding the recognized safe levels. Long-term consumption is associated with toxic effects. The men of the village did more heavy manual labor than the women and so drank more contaminated water. This combined with a lower male capacity to resist oxygen deficiency to suggest a mechanism by which the men would weaken and fall ill while the women would not.  

In addition, the experts noted that villagers commonly contracted diseases of the digestive, respiratory and kidney systems. However children born to women who married outside the village were generally found to be healthy. Their in-depth research led the team to conclude that the diseases of the village were not hereditary, epidemic or endemic but could be attributed to more common causes.

The medical team also noted the low-lying and poorly drained topography of the village. It was prone to becoming waterlogged. Solid waste from both humans and livestock discharged directly into a ditch in front of each dwelling. There were other unhealthy practices such as people and animals living together under the same roof and food preparation in kitchens, which were not separated from other living areas. These observations helped to further explain the high incidence of disease among the villagers.

A new lease of life

Once they had finished their thorough investigation and analysis, the members of the medical team submitted a joint proposal to the organizing committee of the health promotional program sponsored by the Guangdong provincial authorities. Their proposal was for nothing less than the complete relocation of Xietang Village and it attracted the immediate attention of the provincial leaders and related departments.

Last September, with the help of people from all walks of life, Xietang Village was relocated to the aptly named “Jinwei Healthy New Village”. The new village occupies an area of some 3,000 square meters. Here every household has 90 square meters of healthy accommodation with clean tap water and a proper washroom.

Since moving into their new village, two bachelors in their forties have got married. A village wife who fled the Village Where Men Die Young three years ago, returned home. And what’s more, the young people of the village have given up their thoughts of finding work outside and leaving the village permanently.

And now the Nanfang Hospital has organized a medical team to bring a free medical consultation service to the villagers. They provided medical supplies worth some 17,000 yuan (about US$2,000) and 20 cotton quilts. The team also took a village boy with serious kidney problems back to the hospital for diagnostic tests and subsequent treatment for nephritis.

Li Shuiqing, the village head, said enthusiastically, “We would not have been able to lead our new healthy and happy lives if these military doctors hadn’t come to help us find out what was making us ill and allow us to throw off the label of the Village Where Men Die Young.”