Once in a while I’m reminded not only how lucky we are to live in Hawaii and how fortunate that our local health care system works despite its imperfections — at least most of the time.

This fact was reaffirmed recently when I had the opportunity to see an outstanding documentary at the Hawaii International Film Festival, appropriately entitled "Restoring the Light." Directed and produced by Carol Liu, a young Los Angeles filmmaker, her 55-minute film was shot in China and centered on rural families with multiple medical problems.

This clearly isn’t the view of China that evokes visions of bullet trains, gleaming skyscrapers and successful entrepreneurs who race around in their brand new Ferraris. This is a realistic film of contemporary rural China, revealing grinding poverty and hard-working peasants trying to eke out a living from a very unforgiving land without the social safety nets currently enjoyed by U.S. citizens.

As Liu revealed, China has the second-largest economy in the world, yet 60 percent of its people live in the countryside where, in her words, "poverty and inadequate health care persist." As we learn in her film, "inadequate health care" is rather an understatement, at least for the families that are chronicled in her documentary.

The story begins with a dedicated Chinese eye surgeon, so devoted to serving the underprivileged that he sells his home to establish a mobile medical unit to take his practice directly to the underserved.

One of the families that accept his offer of eye care includes a grandmother who must stop working in the fields because she is going blind from cataracts. This type of blindness can be cured by a modern surgical eye procedure that is readily available in the United States.

Before meeting the idealistic ophthalmolgist, the family had been unable to deal with the problem because they were so poor and could barely feed themselves, much less afford travel to an urban center to receive care from an eye surgeon.

The movie is bittersweet.

I won’t give the story away, but suffice it to say, it doesn’t end well for some of the protagonists. Although the Chinese government is currently incapable of delivering adequate health care to its citizens, there are heroes in this story. These realistically filmed peasants include a family’s youngest daughter, who suffers from epilepsy and cares for her blind brother; and a talented art student who foregoes an amputation of her diseased foot to save funds for her education.

There are many lessons to be learned from Liu’s film. While China has come a long way toward modernization, there is a stark disparity between the small percentage of the population that become relatively rich in the cities and the poor that dwell in the countryside, many with a plethora of medical issues.

This is especially poignant for me. As an ophthalmologist who has been in the practice of eye surgery in the United States for over 25 years and teaching as a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine for at least 20 of those years, I know that the tragedies documented by Liu would not occur in our Aloha State.

Our health care system in Hawaii, despite its shortcomings, does indeed continue to take care of the young, the blind and the infirm of all ages, even if the patients are indigent.

With the holidays just around the corner, we should be thankful and proud that, in this great nation, we take care of our citizens.

Malcolm Ing, of Honolulu, and a graduate of Yale Medical School, has an ophthalmology practice at Kapiolani Medical Center. He can be reached at ingm002@hawaii.rr.com, or through www.malcolmingeyemd.com.