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Mum of leukaemia patient begs at China's blockade: Please take her

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JIUJIANG, CHINA: Hours ticked by on Saturday as 50-year-old Lu Yuejin struggled to get past the police checkpoint on the bridge over the Yangtze River and out of Hubei province, which is on virtual lockdown.

Mrs Lu, a farmer from a village on the Hubei province side of the bridge, was trying to gain passage for her daughter, 26-year-old Hu Ping, who has leukaemia. She has been unable to receive a second round of chemotherapy treatment in the overwhelmed hospitals of provincial capital Wuhan.

"My daughter needs to go to hospital in Jiujiang," she said. "She needs to have treatment, but they won't let us through."

Her daughter sat on the ground wrapped in a blanket while Mrs Lu tearfully pleaded with the police.

"Please, take my daughter. I don't need to go past... please, just let my daughter go past," she asked. Her pleas were almost drowned out by a loudspeaker playing a pre-recorded message that residents would not be allowed into Jiujiang, the Jiangxi province city on the southern side of the Yangtze.

The bridge has been largely closed off in an attempt to halt the spread of the new disease, which has infected more than 14,000 people, the vast majority of them in China.

Dozens of people have attempted to cross the police checkpoint in recent days.

Some had succeeded by holding the right train or plane ticket departing from Jiujiang and bought before Jan 24 but many had failed.

For much of Saturday morning, that was the case for Mrs Lu as she pleaded her daughter's case with the authorities.

About an hour after she spoke to Reuters at the checkpoint, the police began to move. Phone calls were made, an ambulance was called and Mrs Lu and Ms Hu were both eventually allowed through. - REUTERS

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