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He Quangui spends his days in a bed connected to a battered oxygen machine that pumps air into his lungs. The monotonous sound is punctuated only by his gasping cough. Like many of his fellow villagers in a mountainous area of Shaanxi Province in China, he answered the government’s call to leave his farm and make a better living as a migrant worker in the 1990s.
He went to work in an illegal gold mine, which, while helping fuel China’s growing economy, cost him dearly: He has silicosis, a form of pneumoconiosis, China’s most common occupational disease.
Today, when he leaves his bed, he often collapses, unable to breathe. There are treatments that could prolong his life and ease the suffering, but he has neither money nor benefits after his seven years working in the mines.
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He Quangui, a former gold miner, is slowly dying of silicosis — an irreversible but preventable lung disease he contracted from years of working in small, unregulated mines in Henan Province in central China. Since he became ill 10 years ago, his wife, Mi Shixiu, 36, has had to take care of his every need. When he is too sickly to walk, she carries him, even up flights of stairs.
Sim Chi Yin/VII
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