Three decades of voluntary medical services are celebrated by a group of doctors in Shanghai and people who benefited from their help to stay healthy.
The medical doctor team from Shanghai Medical College Fudan University has traveled some 350,000 kilometers to visit 77 hospitals in 39 towns of 23 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities to service 120,000 local residents in the past 30 years.
The program has grown from one team to several in each service, which is conducted over the summer vacation.
Ti Gong
They go to the most remote places.
Dr Wang Dahui from the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University said the program created a chance for him to see the huge imbalance of medical resources between developed cities and remote areas.
“We met a child with complicated thin bone fracture in Jianhe, Guizhou Province, and his parents had planned to give up treatment due to the medical expense and local doctors’ uncertainty in curing the child,” he said.
“We communicated with the parents and assisted the surgery in the local hospital to treat the child successfully.”
Dr Zhu Wenqing from Fudan University’s Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital said he met a child with corneal dermoid tumor, which had caused serious damage to the child’s vision.
Due to local limited medical capability, his team arranged a green channel to transfer the child to Shanghai for a successful cornea transplant surgery.
Doctors are nicked by local residents as “angles in white.”
Ti Gong
The medical teams offer free medical consultations.
Members of the service team said their purpose is to allow people living in the very remote areas to also have access to the best medical resources through free medical consultations, lectures and demonstrations.
Based on the Internet, the team also established remote consultation mechanisms and expert workshops with local facilities to offer long-term and regular service.
Many practices and operations, which are very common for Shanghai doctors, are not known to local doctors. So the service team specially focused on giving training for local staff during their visit.
The medical team also benefits from their visits.
Dr Chen Tianhui, from the EENT hospital, said she witnessed patients with nematodosis, a parasitic disease, in Xiji, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and collected profound materials to support her research.
“By collecting and analyzing these patients’ eye information plus artificial intelligence, my team has developed a calculation method for intraocular lens power targeting Chinese patients and has been sent to a top medical journal for evaluation,” she said.
Ti Gong
Team members travel to remote and mountainous regions.
,https://www.shine.cn/news/metro/2410263593/