"Look, Auntie, I can stand to urinate!" Fu Bing, a ten-year-old orphan in Anhui Province, jumps out of bed and proudly shows off his newly acquired ability to his beloved Auntie Xia Peijie.

Because of a congenital crack in his urethra, Fu Bing, who has lived in the Chuzhou Orphanage for ten years, had to squat to urinate until his ailment was cured.

Auntie Xia came into Fu's life as representative of an international welfare fund for children, responsible for arranging medical operations and footing related medical bills for children like Fu.

Nationwide, more than 40,000 children scattered in 160 orphanages are celebrating the International Children's Day holiday June 1 in their own way and with their own dreams. About 80 percent of them, like Fu, suffer from congenital diseases, such as harelip, cleft palate, spinal meningocele and congenital heart disease.

Wu Jianying, program director with the Children's Hope Welfare Committee, affiliated to the China Association of Social Work (CASW), said, "Lacking the love of their natural parents, disabled orphans need more love and care than others."

"The earlier the medical assistance comes, the quicker the nightmare caused by their bodily defects will disappear," she said.

For Fu Bing, who has just walked out of the shadow of his ailment, his biggest dream is to go to college. In China, all orphans living in state-run orphanages enjoy the right to study. So long as they are not adopted, all their life expenses and education fees are covered by the government even after they enter a college.

"However," Wu said, "the top priority for most kids in orphanages is to get their defects cured. Otherwise, the chances of being adopted are small, and their everyday life and study will be hampered by self-contempt."

The funds for medical assistance to orphans in China come either from the central government's allocations or private donations.

Between 1996 and 2000, some 25 million yuan (about US$3.01 million) was jointly spent by the Civil Affairs Ministry and the Ministry of Public Health on 2,549 handicapped orphans. More than half of the latter have been cured, and 40 percent have partly recovered their lost bodily functions. Some two-thirds of them are under 10.

Apart from that, fund-raising programs and volunteer medical assistance activities are initiated every year by hundreds of social welfare organizations, including the United Nations Children's Fund, Children's Hope Welfare Committee and Children's Foundation of China.

Not long ago, a check for 100,000 U.S. dollars was donated by the U.S.-based Children's Hope Welfare Foundation to the CASW as a special fund for medical assistance for disabled orphans.

Helen Hu, China program director of the foundation, said, "Most of the overseas donations come from foreigners who have adopted a Chinese baby. Such people consider children still living in Chinese orphanages as their babies' siblings. Whenever holidays like Children's Day and Christmas come around, they will donate."

Timothy Baker, an American who lived in Beijing for 14 years, adopted three Chinese orphans. Now, the former college English teacher is the executive director of the Philip Hayden Foundation, which specializes in services for China's orphans in Langfang City, Hebei Province.

Wu Jianying said, "Whenever we implement a program, the most difficult thing is to screen out the most vulnerable from a long list of the vulnerable. "

"To help as many children as possible, we have to limit the per capita medical expenses to no more than 10,000 yuan (about 1,205 U.S. dollars), and give preference to kids of preschool age," she said.

During the operations conducted in April and May, Fu Bing did not shed a tear or utter a scream. To relieve his pain, doctors used a specially designed pain-killing instrument, and that put his medical bill far beyond the projected budget.

Gao Chenghua, an expert in education for special-needs children in China, said, "The best treatment period for most disabled children is from the age of 1 to 3, because once they are three years old, their language and comprehension capabilities begin to develop."

"If they are discriminated against, they can feel it, and their psychological health and personality face a high risk of distortion," he said.

To drive away the dark clouds enveloping most disabled orphans, China is implementing a number of foster-care programs, to enable the children to adjust more quickly to society.

(Xinhua News Agency June 1, 2002)