OpinionHelp arrives for parents who manually kept paralysed son breathing

The elderly parents took turns squeezing a pump 18 times a minute, 25,920 times a day, continuously for most of the past seven years.

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Wang Lanqin squeezes a pump to keep her son breathing, in a screenshot from weibo. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Published: 11:16am, 30 Jan 2013Updated: 12:07pm, 30 Jan 2013

They took turns squeezing a pump 18 times a minute, 25,920 times a day, continuously for most of the past seven years. They knew the minute they stopped or stepped away, their son who could no longer breathe on his own would die.

They couldn’t afford a 100,000 yuan (HK$123,000) respiratory machine, but they couldn’t afford to lose their son either.

Fu Minzu and Wang Lanqin, an elderly and poor couple in China’s eastern Zhejiang province who fought a lonely battle to keep their son alive, have received aid from a local hospital that offered to pay for a new breathing machine and agreed to treat Fu Xuepeng without charge, reported Xinhua state news agency on Wednesday.

The news came after the heart-wrenching story widely reported in Chinese media outraged people across the country.

While sympathetic netizens started fund-raisers to relieve the couple from their financial hardship, many lashed out at the local government which critics say failed to provide the family necessary medical aid.

Fu Xuepeng was paralysed in a car accident in 2006 at the age of 23. After being told he would spend the rest of his life in bed, the elderly couple decided to give up work to attend to him full time at home.

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The elderly parents took turns squeezing a pump 18 times a minute, 25,920 times a day, continuously for most of the past seven years.

The elderly parents took turns squeezing a pump 18 times a minute, 25,920 times a day, continuously for most of the past seven years.