I have been in pain for about a week now. I've been in Kunming for around 2 years and I've never had stomach problems for this long before. I went to Richland 2 days ago and got check for parasites, etc and they didn't find anything. They gave me some medicine, but I still have bad 拉肚子. Not fun.

Over the last month we have had loads of kids at the school go down with this, sometimes more than once. The school is in North of the city.

Maybe something in the water?

I was back on track yesterday, I appeared to be digesting food and had quite some energy. After diner though, it started rumbling again, belly puffing up, those eggy burps and a massive 拉肚子. It looks like I'm not digesting anything.

Whatever it is, I'm completely fed up with it and I've been calling in sick enough. Today I'm gonna go to work and if it persists, I might consider taking antibiotics...

Sorry dudes, but a check up for an intestinal parasite means nothing in most hospitals, let alone a Chinese hospital, let alone a Yunnan hospital.

I read a WHO report on this and the stats are terrible, most doctors will miss most parasites even when testing for them. If you really think you have one, go for anti-body blood tests, not just a normal stool culture, or insist on getting stool cultures everyday for 1 week, rather than the normal 1 days or 3 days, or, better yet, get a dna test of your stool, to check for the parasites dna. Even then, anywhere this is going to be done right in China is in a hospital like Beijing Union, not any of the 2nd tier cities.

Your best bet, if you find you don't recover is a combo of -

1) Reputable Chinese medicine doc for symptom control (and even a cure if it turns out to be just a bacterial bug) while you...

2) Find an MD who knows his labs are crap, but can narrow things down somewhat by experience and detective work and then gives you meds that can cover all sorts of stuff, even stuff you tested negative for.

3) Familiarize yourself with the relevant broad spectrum meds, there are lots, as there are lots of different parasites, unfortunately some of the most useful meds (like Ivermectin) are not to be found for human use in China, but you could order them by internet pharmacy. Lastly, do not listen to any dosing recommendations, or really any medical recommendations, from the staff at pharmacies/drug stores. Some the meds are available over the counter, but the dosing advice is always wrong, use your doctors dosing advice or go by international standard protocols.

Other than that, a trip out of Yunnan to get some real lab work done might be advisable. For example, Yunnan has plenty of worms (and possibly other kinds of parasites) that can live in the human body for 50 years or more and don't need to shed many eggs in to your feces, so, local hospitals won't find them, and you''be misdiagnosed.