Six-year-old patient has a laugh

Wang Fang (right), Houston-based international patient specialist at China's Concord Medical Services Holdings, and two staff members at MD Anderson PTC in Houston who dressed up as GG Bond and Xiao Feifei, welcome young Chinesepatient Stephen back for a checkup on Sept 20.

When a six-year-old boy named Stephen walked into the University of Texas MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center in Houston on Tuesday morning, to his great delight, he was greeted byGG Bond and LittleFeifei, two of his favorite cartoon characters from ChineseTV.

He was also given a GG Bondcostume and stuffed toys. He eagerly put on the red suit, transformed into a little GG Bond andgave a high-five to the big GG Bond.

Stephen, a Chinese kindergartner who was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma (a rare bone cancer), had gone through proton therapy at MD Anderson PTC and chemotherapy at MD Anderson Cancer Center from February to June of this year. Now he was back in Houston with his parents for a checkup.

Stephen (whose last name is withheld for privacy reasons) came to Houston through a China referral office in Beijing established by MD Anderson PTC and China's Concord Medical Services Holdings Ltd early this year.

Concord Medical, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, began working with MD Anderson PTC in 2012 and is its second-largest shareholder with MD Anderson Cancer Center the majority shareholder.

Staffed with doctors, nurses, medical and other professionals, the relatively new China referral office offers free proton therapy consultation service directly to Chinese patients.

Proton therapy is an advanced type of radiation treatment using a beam of protons to deliver radiation directly to the tumor, destroying cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue.