Salamdin seemed to be surprised, and explained to Anxia that there are many people here who have big necks, and there is nothing uncomfortable except for being ugly.

Anxia recalled carefully that the big neck disease in western Xinjiang, especially in southern Xinjiang, was only discovered and noticed by the state in the mid-to-late nineties, and it was found that the cause was because of the dietary structure of inland cities, which led to insufficient iodine intake and caused goiter, and then the state vigorously promoted the addition of some salt, and finally at the end of the nineties, all the people in western Xinjiang ate some salt.

Looking at the beautiful Uyghur girl in front of her, the neck protrudes so big, not only ugly, but the goiter affects the health of the body, at first anxiety, insomnia, weakness of the limbs, and slowly will develop into rapid heartbeat, irregular heartbeat, palpitations and thirst, dyspnea, swollen throat, thickened neck, menstrual disorders, menstrual abortion, bulging eyes, blurred vision and other complications.

At the beginning, the big neck disease was not taken seriously, because the disease is not a malignant disease, and the course of the disease is long, and all the complications are not easy for ordinary people to detect, and they can be tolerated, which has led to the epidemic of the Great Neck Disease in Western Xinjiang for decades.

Anxia beckoned, and the little girl slowly walked towards Anxia, she took out a large handful of milk candy from her bag and gave it to the little girl.

The little girl immediately picked up the candy, opened the candy wrapper and was about to put it in her mouth, as if she remembered her grandmother, fed the first milk candy to her grandmother, and then ate the second one herself, and gave all the candy in her hand to her grandmother, and her little face turned red happily, and she looked at her grandmother.

The old Uyghur woman said something, the little girl ran to the side with the candy to play, Anxia slowly stepped forward, leaned on the old woman, and asked Salamdin to help her translate, she wanted to talk to the old woman.

Saladin nodded and sat between Ansha and the old woman, who told Salamdin that she was a doctor and asked the old woman if she could let her see her big neck, and she gave the old woman a check-up.

After listening to this, the old woman nodded and untied the cloth pocket wrapped around the big neck, Anxia first checked the old woman's pulse, and then checked the lesion, one of the old woman's thyroid nodules is a lump, and the others are relatively hard, the only treatment is to supplement iodized salt, and then do surgery to remove it, and because of the big neck disease, the old woman's body has a lot of problems.

Anxia asked the old woman if she was often weak, her eyes were sometimes blurry, and it took a long time to get better, and it was not easy to fall asleep at night, and her heart was beating very fast.

After the old woman listened, she nodded again and again, she had the problems An Xia said, and she called An Xia sent by Hu Da to save her.

Anxia told the old woman that the first thing to do was to go to the commissary to buy iodized salt, and the second was to go to the hospital for surgery to cut out the lesions and eat kelp once or twice a week, so that the disease would be cured slowly.

After Salamdin finished translating, the old woman slowly lowered her head, wiped the corners of her dry eyes with a headscarf, and said a word.

Salamdin sighed and told Anxia that the old woman's family was poor and could not afford to eat fine salt, let alone have surgery, and as for what kelp was, she had never heard of it, and that this disease would not kill people, so she was like that.

An Xia's breath was stagnant, she should have thought that the ethnic minorities in southern Xinjiang were particularly poor, and she knew that their lives were difficult when she looked at the old woman and the child's torn skirt and patches on their headscarves.

"What kind of salt do you all eat?"

This Salam-din didn't need to ask the old woman, he knew for himself that he spoke Chinese, which was not very proficient, and told Anxia that their family ate coarse salt, like the poorer ethnic minority families ate earth salt.

If you can eat coarse salt, they are all families with good conditions, and many poor places in southern Xinjiang eat soil salt.

There are salt lakes in western Xinjiang, and the salt of salt lakes is generally coarse salt, and families like Salamding eat coarse salt on weekdays, mash coarse salt with garlic mortars, and use this to cook milk tea and roast naan, and there is also fine salt.

But many ethnic minorities are very poor, they don't know how to farm, so they make some handmade soap, maltose, or pick some of their own grapes to sell, and have no income at all, and they can't afford to eat the coarse salt of the salt lake, so they eat soil salt.

There are many saline-alkali lands in western Xinjiang, people will scrape off the whitish soil on the ground, and then add water to stir and precipitate, and slowly boil the water to dry, so that the salt in the soil slowly precipitates out, forming crystalline particles on the surface, and then scraping off this layer of crystals, which is soil salt.

This kind of salt is cheap, although it tastes a little bitter, but as long as you are willing to work, you don't need to spend money to eat this kind of salt, many people have eaten soil salt that doesn't cost money for generations, no one is willing to spend five cents to buy fine salt in the commissary to eat, five cents for these families, maybe a few cents can earn a few cents in a few days, many families will earn a few dollars a month, more than a dozen yuan, how can they spend five cents to buy salt to eat, and eat salt a month, one bag is not enough at all, and several bags are also needed, because ethnic minorities boiling milk tea and naan are their daily diet, Both of these require a lot of salt.

After listening to Salamdin's words, Anxia knew that she was still too poor, if she could eat fine salt, who would eat earth salt, she asked Salamdin to ask, can she go to the old woman's house to have a look?

Salam-al-Din told Anshya that the old woman lived far away, that it would take a long time, and that the old woman's watermelons had not yet been sold.

Anxia took out fifty yuan and handed it to Salamdin, asking her to tell the old woman that she had bought all the watermelons, and if she could go to his house to see it later, and told Salamdin that she wanted to investigate how many people in southern Xinjiang had this kind of big neck disease, and her school was the best medical school in the country, and she wanted everyone to eat fine salt, otherwise the health would get worse and worse from generation to generation.

When Salamdin heard that Anxia was going to do such a thing, his expression gradually became solemn, and he told Anxia that he was willing to help Anxia with all his might, and he had seen his compatriots suffer from big neck disease over the years, because they had no money to see a doctor, many people were in pain, and he also wanted to do something for everyone.

He pushed away An Xia's money and had a serious conversation with the old woman, the old woman looked at An Xia, her dry eyes flashed a little water, she slowly stood up, took An Xia into her arms, and kept shouting Hu Da in her mouth.

The old woman packed up the remaining cantaloupe and watermelon, and had to give these to Anxia, and finally Xiao Jingsheng accepted the watermelon, everyone squeezed and left in the van, because of Xiao Ran's physical problems, Salamding first sent Xiao Jingsheng and Xiao Ran home, Anxia just went to the suitcase to take two packs of candy cubes and two packs of brick tea, and quietly transferred some candies and biscuits from the space, and set foot on the road to the old lady's house with Salamdin.

The old woman's house was really far away, and she drove for more than two hours, and the old woman walked to the edge of the desert, from last night when it was very dark to dawn, carrying so many melons with children, Anxia couldn't imagine it.