Feng Cuiqin, 60, from Dangjie village in Linzhou, Henan province, attributes the death of her husband to pollution in the Qihe River. XIANG MINGCHAO / CHINA DAILY

Unaffordable expenses

The death toll is not just a statistic for 44-year-old Hao Helian: it also represents unbearable pain. Her only child died last year of leukemia.

Hao's 20-year-old son was diagnosed with the disease in January 2011 and died after four months of treatment. He was the youngest person to die of the disease in the village in recent years.

The medical bills exceeded 300,000 yuan ($47,550), far more than a rural family can afford.

To pay back the money borrowed from relatives, Hao's husband worked at a construction site in the city during slow seasons on the farm, bringing in about 10,000 yuan annually.

Hao ran a grocery store in the village, which did not bring in much money.

"You might have noticed that the things in the store are very cheap," Hao said. "Sometimes I cannot even sell 10 yuan worth of goods in a whole day."

The family can only hope to repay the debts by "watching every penny, every day", Hao said.

She doesn't know if she'll be able to have another child and can't afford to go through medical checks with her husband.

Medical costs are an unaffordable burden for rural families with cancer patients, said Feng.

Her family spent nearly 100,000 yuan for her husband's treatment last year, most of it borrowed from relatives.

As for Feng, she must take five kinds of pills every day and receive injections twice a year. The total medical expenses are about 1,600 yuan per month.

Feng can't earn anything because of her illness, and all of her medical bills have been paid by her 34-year-old son, who works in the local police station for a monthly salary of less than 2,000 yuan. Feng's daughter-in-law is a teacher in the local primary school who earns about 1,000 yuan per month.

The young couple had to send their own daughter to live with the wife's mother, since most of the family's money was used to buy medicine for Feng.