Hu Songwen was studying to be a meteorologist in Nanjing when he was diagnosed with renal failure in 1993. For six years, he paid a visit every few days to his local hospital to have his blood cleansed by dialysis. But each visit cost him £50 and the years of treatment exhausted his family’s savings. In 1999, he decided to build his own machine using kitchen equipment, medical parts and a textbook.
