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Business sets up US treatment for Chinese

Wealthy mainlanders dissatisfied with medical treatment at home can get top-notch care in the US with little fuss, thanks to a former lecturer

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Cai Qiang has found a niche both rewarding and fulfilling.
Zhuang Pinghuiin Beijing

The lengths to which wealthy mainlanders will go to provide safe imported food or high-quality overseas education to their families comes as no surprise to Cai Qiang. What amazes him is that many of those same people have no idea how to access top-notch medical care when they or their loved ones fall ill. As the general manager of Saint Lucia Consulting, Cai, a 48-year-old former university teacher, has found a business opportunity that is both financially rewarding and personally fulfilling: helping people in China seek treatment abroad.

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At the beginning, most of our clients were at the end of their tether - those who had sought every possible treatment on the mainland, such as a boy who had a brain tumour removed. His doctor said he could either receive radiation therapy and risk harming his ability to learn, or he could receive no therapy and risk having a relapse. His mother is a real estate developer in Shanxi , and she could not accept either scenario. Eventually she came to us and we arranged for him to receive proton therapy for three months at Massachusetts General Hospital [in Boston], because there was no such treatment available in China. Nowadays, more and more patients come to us when they are diagnosed with cancer. They are affluent and of high social standing. They went to the top doctors in China, but they want to see the best doctors in the world to get the best results. Another reason [they come to us] is because they lack confidence in hospitals or doctors on the mainland, partly because of negative media coverage of the medical sector there, such as doctors receiving kickbacks or prescribing unnecessary drugs.

I studied physics at college and then stayed at my university in Zhengzhou, Henan, to be a teacher. Then, in 1998, I started a business to help people apply to study abroad. This business opened in 2010 after I realised that so few wealthy people were aware they could seek better medical treatment abroad. My objective was to help 1,000 people to seek treatment abroad within 10 years.

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