The recently aired documentary “China On the Move”, jointly produced by Shanghai Media Group’s documentary center and UK’s Lion Television, has aroused a warm response.
According to Shanghai Media Group’s documentary center, “China On the Move”, the English name of the documentary was proposed by the UK partner who hopes to find the answer to what is happening in China and explore how China deals with tough tests facing the entire human race in the modern times. The first episode focuses on China's fight against poverty.
Thanks to eight years of hard work, China has achieved all goals of poverty alleviation as scheduled and lifted nearly 100 million people out of poverty. The world is amazed at China’s poverty alleviation achievements even with the largest population on earth and the fast recovery of China’s economy in spite of the pandemic.
Behind this incredible accomplishment, what is Fudan’s story in this national fight against poverty?
On the morning of February 25, a grand ceremony was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to honor those who have made great contributions to this great mission.
Sun Jinqiao, the deputy director of Clinical Immunology Department of Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, and the Neurosurgery Department of Huashan Hospital of Fudan University were respectively awarded as the National Advanced Individual and the National Advanced Group for Poverty Alleviation.
Sun Jinqiao
Medical aid is one of the key components in winning the battle against poverty.
Sun Jinqiao, as a member of Shanghai’s fourth team to support Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai Province and Deputy Director of Clinical Immunology Department of Children’s Hospital, Fudan University, has served as Deputy Director of the Prefectural Health Commission and President of People’s Hospital of Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture since 2019.
In July 2019, Sun went to Guoluo, and since then, he has committed himself to fostering the medical development in the region. When he first set foot on this land, Sun felt the challenge that faced him was bigger than what he had imagined before.
“Once I took a colleague of mine to see a doctor after I arrived in the Prefecture for the first time, I saw merely a bed, an oxygen tank and a monitor in the intensive care unit at the hospital’s emergency center,” Sun recalled.
He set about reconstructing the emergency center immediately after taking office and helped build standardized intensive care units for the hospital.
At the beginning of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Sun gave up his vacation to develop an pandemic prevention and control system for protective materials reservation and safe production.
Sun suffered severe hypoxia caused by sudden pulmonary infection in November 2020, recovered after two weeks and returned to work right away to continue working on his proposal of a medical reform. He integrated medical resources and led the establishment of the prefectural medical and health service group with the prefectural People’s Hospital as the main medical institution of the group.
He has helped implement 8 construction projects for the prefectural People’s Hospital with the fund he raised: a medical imaging technology building project, an operating rooms and emergency center upgrade project, an oxygen station project, an infectious diseases center project, a medical sewage treatment project, a preparations building project, a smart cloud remote system project and a mobile payment project have witnessed Sun’s efforts in improving the local medical conditions.
“It never occurred to me that I could build houses as a doctor,” Sun said with a smile.
25 new rules and regulations, 12 steering committees and 6 new disciplines have been set up and 18 new technologies have been put into use, with a record-high survival rate of premature infants under 1000g in Guoluo.
The number of outpatient visits and inpatient visits at the prefectural People’s Hospital hit a year-on-year increase of 27% and 21% respectively in 2019 and the neonatal mortality rate in the prefecture decreased by 25% year-on-year.
Under the leadership of Sun, each member of the medical team has taken charge of a department. An agreement on personnel mobility has been signed with academician Dong Jiahong and Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, 62 experienced medical experts from Shanghai have been invited to Guoluo to give short-term training, with 10 local medics sent for training in Xining and Shanghai.
In the plateau region, the incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases is quite high.
“There is not enough time for most of the patients here to be sent to Xining (the capital of Qinghai Province) for treatment, because the treatment window of myocardial infarction is only 6 hours,” Sun said.
In order to solve this problem, a chest pain center was set up in the prefectural People’s Hospital in September 2019.
“We have developed a complete emergency system for acute myocardial infarction. Once there are cases in township health centers, transport and treatment can be carried out immediately and diagnosis can be made in our hospital within 20 minutes,” Sun said.
Four patients were successfully rescued in the first month after the chest pain center was put into use and more than 30 lives have been saved since its establishment.
Sun has also focused on the prevention and control of hydatid disease, a common disease in the region. He has provided diagnosis, treatment and health consultation for more than 2,000 locals and conducted disease screening for more than 400 congenital heart patients, 50 cleft lip and palate patients and over 60 ankylosing spondylitis patients. Among these patients, 52 patients have received free treatment from Sun.
Department of Neurosurgery, Huashan Hospital of Fudan University
The Department of Neurosurgery of Fudan’s Huashan Hospital is the largest of its kind in Asia.
In 1999, Professor Zhang Yi, a neurosurgeon, went to the First People’s Hospital of Aksu Prefecture in Xinjiang and served as the director of neurosurgery for three years. He was the first person from Huashan Hospital to aid Xinxiang and more efforts soon followed.
So far, over 30 medics have been sent to the Second Hospital of Kashgar where Huashan Neurosurgery helped establish the Department of Neuroscience and assisted the Second Hospital of Kashgar in becoming a Grade III Level A hospital, the highest rank according to the Chinese hospital classification.
The Department of Neuroscience of the Second Hospital of Kashgar has now become a key clinical department at provincial level in Xinjiang. The Department has witnessed a steady growth in the number of overall medical operations and the number of difficult and risky operations year by year. It produced research papers in both general and major academic journals and received funds from local and provincial authorities. The Department also held a national-level course for continuous education.
Since June 2015, Huashan Neurosurgery has so far sent 5 doctors to participate in the construction of brain medicine in Shigatse. The doctors overcame sickness at an altitude of over 4,000 meters, while carrying out Shigatse’s first aneurysm clipping surgery, first deep meningioma resection surgery and first CPA meningioma resection surgery. Huashan Hospital donated surgical instruments that worth 100,000 yuan.
In November 2017, the People’s Hospital of Shigatse City passed the on-site evaluation for becoming a Grade III Level A General Hospital. In December 2019, the Shigatse Stroke Center was officially unveiled.
Yunnan is also an important destination where Huashan Neurosurgery stations. In addition to providing assistance in medical resources and academic research, the medics funded 7 financially challenged students throughout their studies in high school.
Huashan Neurosurgery has been offering help in a sustainable way through on-site instruction, apprenticeship, remote consultation, free medical checkup in remote areas, etc. It brings hope to people in Xinjiang with their lofty medical ethics, superb medical expertise and a high sense of responsibility and mission.
In 2012, Fudan University became one of the first 16 universities to be assigned with the mission to help poor counties as part of the national poverty alleviation effort in the border mountainous areas of west Yunnan. Fudan was paired with Yongping County of Dali Prefecture, Yunnan Province.
Based on the actual needs of Yongping, Fudan University has given all-round and multi-dimensional assistance to the county in terms of strategy planning, personnel training, funding, publicity, agricultural sales to improve its educational, healthcare and economic development.
Fudan has invested and raised 56.321 million yuan for designated poverty-relief counties since 2012. It has trained 5,808 primary-level officials and technical staffers, and bought and promoted agricultural products totaling 23.984 million yuan. The poverty incidence rate of Yongping County dropped from 16.94% in 2012 to zero today.
Taking full advantage of the health resources of Fudan’s affiliated hospitals, the university has continuously expanded the destinations of health-driven poverty alleviation, and assisted in the construction of 32 medical institutions in 17 prefectures in Yunnan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Sichuan and Jiangxi, making sure that the residents there do not fall back to poverty due to illnesses.
