Younger Brother Kills Himself So Family Can Afford Older Brother’s Kidney Transplant

China Daily reports that brothers Honghui (20) and Hongato (18) were diagnosed with Uremia, a symptom of kidney malfunction, within months of each other in 2010.

Unable to afford the mounting medical bills, their parents, Chuanyou and wife Zheng Tingxia, sold almost everything they owned in search of two matching kidneys to save their son's lives.

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His suicide note, which explained his final thoughts, reads: "Now that I am gone, my brother will have a better chance of getting cured." Like the 18-year-old boy, his brother Gao Honghui, two years older, also suffered from uremia.

At the end of his suicide note, the boy wrote: "Brother, let me know when your disease is cured. I will be happy for you."

Gao Hongtao's final year was difficult. Apart from physical pain and economic pressure, he had no hope of being cured. The enthralling hopelessness prompted him to end his life by drinking pesticides.

Both boys were at the top of their class in school and the future seemed bright as they put the finishing touches to the new house in the county of Funan in Anhui province in the central of China.

But then disaster struck when the eldest, Honghui, after a month of illness was diagnosed with uremia.
Doctors told his parents that only a kidney transplant could save their son's life.

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But then, just as they were coming to terms with this disaster, Hongtao was diagnosed with the same condition. The boys' father sold everything they had including their brand-new, almost-finished house and borrowed heavily travelling around the country to various medical institutes in a bid to find a solution.

When the money ran out, teachers and friends of the two boys managed to raise another £10,000 for further treatment. But it was not enough.

Doctors had hoped that a transplant from the parents might be suitable but the boys' father was not the right tissue match, while their mother fell seriously ill when she learned of her son's condition rendering her inadmissible as a donor.

Seeing his parents slowly falling into ruin and after learning that there was no tissue match, locked himself in his room, wrote a short note to his family and drank pesticide. There he died in agony.

In the note he said: 'Having both of us is ruining you, I hope now that you will be able to concentrate on my brother and save his life. When he survives as I know he will, I simply want him to say to me I made it, and I will be content.'

Honghui, now 23, has successfully undergone a kidney transplant and is expected to make a full recovery.

But for dad Gao Chuanyou, 44, it is a bittersweet moment. He told local media: 'I wonder perhaps how we can afford to be happy with Gao Hongtao, but we will take it one step at a time.'

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