July 21st, 2009, Beijing. Together with China’s civil affairs and health ministries, the China Children and Teenagers' Fund (CCTF) launched a charity program on July 21 in Beijing to provide insurance towards more than 570,000 orphans across China against critical illnesses.

Under the program called “Safeguarding Orphans’ Health”, the China Children Insurance Foundation (CCIF), which was set up in April by CCTF, will provide healthy orphans with charity insurance against critical illnesses, while the ministries will provide different levels of subsidies to the remaining diagnosed with critical illnesses.

“As a vulnerable group in the society, orphans, especially those suffering from critical illnesses are in dire need of the care and support from our government and the society as well. Charity insurance is complementary to the government-led salvation system and we also hope more people can join in us to help the orphans,” said Ms. Song Liying, Secretary General of CCTF. 

A survey on the health condition of the orphans registered with Civil Affairs authorities is being carried out across the country.

“The survey may be finished within August. We are also recounting the number of the orphans as some of the children may not live at the government-support welfare houses but with their relatives,” said Ms. Wang Suying, deputy chief of the social welfare and charitable activities promotion department with the Civil Affairs Ministry.
The program wins support from the Ministry of Health. Mr. Zhou Jun, vice director general of the ministry’s Medical Service Regulation Department, promised to open green light in treating the orphans as well as organizing group consultation when necessary.

  
According to Ms. Song, in an effort to maximize the impact of philanthropy donation raised to save children with critical illnesses, the CCTF has set up the CCIF to provide insurance protections rather than traditional cash donation to those sick children.

Working together with the Mingya Insurance Brokers’ Co. Ltd., a startup brokers’ house founded by a group of young entrepreneurs, CCIF is able to strike good deals with insurers in the market after a number of rounds of bidding.

With a donation of RMB 20 Yuan (USD $3), CCIF provides an insurance protection of RMB 100,000 Yuan (~USD $15,000) to an insured child against critical illnesses/severe injuries like leukemia.

CCIF is thus able to amplify donation impact to benefit more people, because the donation to be used as insurance premiums cost much less than the indemnity paid to the children in case of contingencies, or affliction of critical illness in this case. As the cost needed to protect one child is much smaller, many more children will be benefited by a given sum of donation. On the donor’s side, this lowered donation barrier will make more people willing to contribute, as it only takes USD $3 to help one needy child.

There are about 360 million children in China. Less than half are covered in the commercial medical insurance system or social welfare system. Even those that are covered can not afford expensive treatments for a disease like leukemia.
The insurance mechanism acts before the disaster comes rather than responding passively afterwards. Before the “Safeguarding Orphans’ Health” program, the CCIF had already completed insurance distribution covering some 120,000 children aged from 3 to 15 in four provinces, among whom more than 60,000 are from the “May 12 quake”-hit areas last year, said CCIF’s managing director Dr. Heidi Hu.

According to Dr. Hu, CCIF offers innovative donation channels such as mobile SMS and on-line donation. It also partners with Give2Asia to help enabling overseas supporters to make donations. Donors in the U.S. and H.K. can support CCIF by making their donation through Give2Asia. These donors will obtain local tax-deductible privilege and professional donation management services from Give2Asia. Information on how to do that is available at: http://baoxian.cctf.org.cn

As part of All-China Women’s Federation, CCTF is China’s first and one of the most renowned philanthropy foundation founded in 1981. It receives help from the massive networks of the Women’s Federation to identify those in need and offer a broad-base protection through charity work.