Three times a week, Hu Songwen sits on a small toilet in his home in a rural east China town and fires up his homemade dialysis machine.

Three times a week, Hu Songwen sits on a small toilet in his home in a rural east China town and fires up his homemade dialysis machine.

Hu, who has had kidney disease requiring dialysis for 20 years, built his own dialysis machine with medical equipment, such as a blood pump and plastic tubing. The crude device has sustained his life since he stopped going to the hospital 13 years ago. The machine removes waste products from his blood that aren't removed by his kidneys.

Hu was a college junior when he was diagnosed in 1993. After 6 years of treatment, hefty hospital bills depleted his family's savings.

"The cost for each home treatment is only 60 yuan (US$9.60), which is 12 percent of the hospital charge for dialysis," Hu said.

He mixes potassium chloride, sodium chloride and sodium hydrogen carbonate into purified water to make dialysis fluid before undergoing the procedure. The single man lives with his 81-year-old mother in Qutang township of Jiangsu Province.

Hu kept his home treatments a secret until July of last year, when he put a video of his procedure on the Internet. The footage became an online sensation after Hu's story was reported by the Southern Weekly last week.

Hu said the video was not intended to showcase his invention, but to get more suitable treatment. Hu said his machine can be dangerous. Two of his friends died after building and using similar machines.

Hu made the video after learning a nationwide rural cooperative medical insurance and a medical aid system are covering kidney disease.

The local government included him in October and the cost of each treatment should be 60 yuan, the same as his home treatment. Yet he is reluctant to switch, saying the nearest hospital is distant and very crowded.