High stakes: Dong Bao, a 65-by-85cm woodblock painting by Pham Khac Quang, is being sold for US$600 to help meet medical treatment costs for the artist's wife, who has been in a coma since Friday.

HA NOI  (VNS) — It may not be the ideal way to present a painter's work, but Pham Khac Quang is trying to gather every last penny he can to save his wife, currently in a coma at Ha Noi's Viet Duc hospital.

Quang's wife slipped into a coma after undergoing two operations on March 13 to terminate a nine-week foetus and remove gall bladder and kidney stones.

Doctors have said that blood infection caused by her having to stop taking medicines for the stones because of her pregnancy had led to her current condition.

Trang Thanh Hien, one of Quang's friends who has put up an appeal on her Facebook account, said that Quang, a graduate from Ha Noi's most prestigious Fine Arts School, did not want just to receive donations from well-wishers. He has put up some of his paintings for sale.

He's asking for VND11,000,000 (about US$510) for an original woodblock painting.

Dong Bao (Fellow Countrymen), tells the symbollic story of Vietnamese people emerging from a giant egg. (In Vietnamese, the term literally means sharing one cocoon.)

The total costs of medical treatment, including the operations and kidney dialysis, has been estimated at VND500 million ($24,000), Hien said.

She said she's hoping that someone can organise an auction to raise the money needed to pay rising hospital fees. — VNS