China's charity getting Internet boost

Beijing - The Chinese Red Cross Foundation has partnered with an IT company to launch an online crowd-funding website to help poor patients with direct access into donations for life-saving medical care.

The foundation is a subsidiary of the Red Cross Society of China, the largest humanitarian organization of the county.

Despite a universal coverage of health insurance, many major disease sufferers got bankrupt due to high out-of-pocket medical costs and nearly 30 million Chinese suffer poverty because of diseases, the foundation's estimation showed.

"It's a new charity model highlighting the use of the Internet technology, which helps patients reach as many potential donors as possible," said Sun Shuopeng, secretary general of the foundation at the program launch Tuesday.

"The underprivileged patients can upload personal information including their conditions and the amount of cash donations requested into the system and these would be made public on the website after the foundation's verification", he said.

"The public can shop the cases they want to help and the donation channel would be closed when the requested amount is reached," he added.

To help promote the resources, the foundation enlisted willing medical staff at large public hospitals nationwide as volunteers to help link those in need with the outlet.