Hepatitis stole 10 years of her life. Now Chinese patient has a third chance at a kidney transplant

Sun Wenjuan was 19 when she was diagnosed with a renal disease and faced a condition that could have fatally poisoned her. By the time she was 20, she had had two kidney transplants – including one from her mother – and both failed.

Now in her mid-30s, she has survived against long odds and is eager to grab her third chance at life with both hands.

Clear of hepatitis B and C – undetected infections that set her battle for health back by a decade – Sun is today strong enough to face transplant surgery again.

Sun was 20 and close to death when she was first interviewed by the South China Morning Post in August 2003.

It was nine months after a first failed transplant and more than a year after she had been diagnosed with uraemia, a chronic kidney disease.

She was from a village in the small northern city of Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, and working as a guest house cleaner in Beijing. Like many migrant workers, she was not covered by medical insurance at the time and her family could not afford the dialysis fees, then about 4,500 yuan (US$650) a month, to treat her.

Her family sold everything they had – 80 goats and a television set – to pay for a second transplant when her mother offered a kidney and the Communist Party secretary of her village raised 40,000 yuan from neighbours and local businesses to ease the financial burden.