Plan seeks to tackle poverty, disease

CHENGDU: A five-year development program to lift residents of a region of Sichuan province out of poverty and reduce the high incidence among them of a debilitating bone disease will be launched this year, a senior official has said.

The town of Maiwa in Hongyuan county in the Tibetan-Qiang autonomous prefecture of Aba, will host a pilot of a scheme that will aim to improve treatment and prevention of Kaschin-Beck disease, a rare condition that bloats the joints and causes limb deformities or dwarfism.

Speaking on Tuesday at a function to launch the program, Fan Xiaojian, chief of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, said the central government will allocate 334 million yuan ($47.8 million) a year to the scheme.