Hong Kong has its own universal health coverage, its own currency, and its own customs procedures, even for people who enter from China. The relative wealth of health care and educational institutions, as compared with those in China, means that more funds are available for education and treatment of people with trisomy 21. Conditions for people with trisomy 21 are very different in the rest of China. Until recently, there was only one school for individuals with mental retardation, with places for 100 students, in all of China, which has a total population of 2.1 billion. Now there are three or four schools, but conditions are still woefully inadequate.
China has no parent or patient organizations.
If such organizations evolve, they will come from the top down, established by the government, rather than from the concerted efforts of families. Prenatal diagnosis with maternal blood plasma For over ten years, scientists have attempted to isolate fetal cells from maternal blood in order to develop non-invasive prenatal diagnosis that would involve only a blood test. Such a test would pose no procedural risk to the fetus and could be offered to all pregnant women who wish it. They are rare, representing at most one in 100,000 cells in maternal blood. Some cells may be left over from previous pregnancies and it may be difficult to distinguish these from cells representing the current pregnancy.