Soldiers give home’s leprosy patients a lot to...
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Nantong report A5 Friday, March 25, 2016 Zhu Yongkang and Diao Ganglie, both of whom suffer from leprosy and live at an elderly welfare home in Nantong, celebrate their wedding at a nearby border inspection station. ZHANG SHANYU / FOR CHINA DAILY Chief surgeon earns praise from patients and local colleagues Chen Chang, chief surgeon at Nantong Sixth People’s Hospital Z hu Yongkang and his wife Diao Ganglie had an unforgettable wed- ding anniversary in late January. The elderly couple, both leprosy patients at an elderly welfare home in Nantong, cel- ebrated their seven-year wed- ding anniversary with a group of soldiers whom they call “their sons”. Leprosy is a chronic, infec- tious disease that can affect the nervous system and skin. It may cause a loss of sensation that sometimes leads to amputation. e welfare home, one of the few in Nantong that receives leprosy patients, moved to its current location in 1996. As the disease oſten scars one’s facial appearance, neighbors at the time were afraid of the home, which is when the soldiers from the station from the Xinkai- gang Border Inspection Station decided to help. Over the past 20 years, many of the soldiers spent a lot of time with Zhu and Diao. Zhu, 72, has suffered from leprosy since he was 14. He became a member of the home in 1973. Diao, 67, was diag- nosed with the disease when she was 7. She was sent to the home in 1974. ey met at the home and soon became interested in each other. e soldiers in fact encouraged them to further their friendship. Seven years ago, the couple were married in a ceremony arranged by the soldiers. is year, the soldiers celebrated the couple’s seven-year anniversary, affectionately calling the child- less couple their “mom and dad”. ey bought cake and candy and decorated the couple’s room at the home with red lanterns and roses. Surrounded by the young faces, the couple burst into tears when the candles were lit. “These patients are mostly elderly people with no chil- dren,” said Ci Wanghua, head of the station. “If we didn’t help them, who else would?” e soldiers regularly visit the home, oſten helping the elderly residents with their chores, such as cleaning rooms and washing clothes. Ci said spiritual conso- lation is also important for the patients, who rarely have visi- tors. Soldiers oſten talk to the home’s elderly people and lend them their ears. e soldiers have also gained some public support to buy blankets and clothing for the patients. To better provide aid and services, the soldiers installed an alarm bell linking their station with the home. If patients need assistance, they can sound the bell to call the soldiers. Jiang Lie, a soldier from the Xinkaigang station, has worked at the station for eight years. In 2014, he was promoted and relocated to another station. Soon aſterward, Jiang gave up his promotion, telling his supe- riors, “These elderly people need me.” Wang Xiuchong, a volunteer doctor who has provided free medical checks for the patients at the welfare home, said: “I have never seen anyone else like these soldiers who provide con- stant services for the home in 20 years. ere are many new faces among the soldiers as some are transferred to other stations over the years, but they always come to help at the home.” Contact the writers through [email protected]. cn Soldiers give home’s leprosy patients a lot to celebrate By DING CONGRONG, CHE KE, JIANG XINGMAO and ZHANG LINGLI A leading thoracic sur- geon in East China has made a name for himself with his technically advanced surger- ies. Chen Chang, 44, is the chief surgeon at the department of minimally invasive thoracic surgery at the Nantong Sixth People’s Hospital in Jiangsu province. He is also the vice- president of the Shanghai Pul- monary Hospital affiliated to Tongji University. Chen graduated from the Nanjing University Medical School and received his doc- torate from the Suzhou Uni- versity Medical School. With funding from the Chi- na Scholarship Council, Chen was a visiting scholar at Wash- ington University in St. Louis in the United States from 2002 to 2003 and participated in the research of bronchiolitis obliterans, an inflammation caused by lung transplanta- tions. In September 2010, he attended a monthlong train- ing session at the department of thoracic surgery at the Uni- versity of Paris-Sud as a visit- ing scholar. In December 2015, Chen was named a Leading Talent of Shanghai by the Shang- hai government, becoming the third thoracic surgeon to receive the honor in the metropolis. Over the past 19 years, Chen has gained much experience in diagnosing lung tumors and treating lung cancer using the latest technologies. Chen’s colleagues and patients speak highly of his professional expertise and work ethics. Fan Gang, director of the department of minimally invasive thoracic surgery at Nantong Sixth People’s Hos- pital and who has worked with Chen on more than 200 oper- ations, said Chen is so skilled that it takes him an hour to finish a surgery that would normally take three hours. Fan explained that Chen’s use of a single 3-centimeter cut on patients in thoracic sur- geries creates less bleeding and pain and enables patients to recover more quickly. Surgeons in most of China’s grade-three hospitals — the highest-level public hospital — normally make three or four cuts to perform such an operation, Fan said. Chen’s technique is con- sidered advanced in Asia and across the world, he added. With lung cancer on the rise in China, an increasing number of people are being diagnosed with lung nodules. When a 74-year-old patient surnamed Zhang in Haimen, Jiangsu province, was diag- nosed with advanced lung cancer in late 2015, his family was shocked. To make matters worse, doctors from the city told Zhang that surgery would be futile. But aſter Zhang’s son took his father to Nantong Sixth People’s Hospital, the fam- ily was relieved when Chen’s examination of Zhang found that he suffered from lung nodules rather than lung cancer. He said he expected Zhang to survive thoraco- scopic surgery. On Jan 23, Chen, Fan and Shi Weirong, a physician at the hospital, performed sur- gery on Zhang that took more than an hour. Zhang recov- ered smoothly and was dis- charged a week later to spend the Spring Festival holiday with his family. When Zhang went for a post-op examination aſter the holidays, he was in tears. He told Chen: “I thought that it would be the end of my life before I saw you. I feel so grateful for your help. Being an impoverished patient, I was so honored to have a distin- guished medical expert care for me so much and waive off my medical fees.” As the chief surgeon, Chen said he is constantly improv- ing the skills of members on his medical team. “When we have questions about medical issues, Chen always shares his insights and views with us, which are sometimes enlightening,” Shi said. “He would also invite us to dinner aſter we completed several surgeries and discuss with us surgery-related issues that demand special attention.” Since December 2013, the medical team headed by Chen has conducted thoracoscopic surgeries for more than 270 patients, which enabled the Nantong Sixth People’s Hos- pital to be ranked first among all hospitals in the city. Contact the writers through dingcongrong@chinadaily. com.cn Over past 20 years, welfare home has received big lift from nearby military station, Ding Congrong, Wu Yinhua and Yin Baotian report. By LI JING and YOU LIAN Zhu Hanming’s family has lived in Nantong for more than half a century. As the city becomes increasingly modern- ized, he has seen both the city and his family change. Born in the small village of Xuetian in Nantong, Zhu, now 73, accomplished the then rare feat of finishing middle school. He then attended a short-term accountancy course and found a job as a work-point recorder on a collective farm in the vil- lage. He met his wife Ma Niany- ing there. Ma, who is a year younger, said she fell in love at first sight. “He was conscientious, had a good temper and a handsome face,” Ma recalled. “I never attended school and he was knowledgeable, a real intellec- tual in my eyes.” Aſter a year, 20-year-old Zhu married 19-year-old Ma. She gave birth to three children, a boy and two girls. But life was no piece of cake. Their first house was a hum- ble straw hut. One winter day in 1973, a fire broke out and destroyed the hut — nothing was leſt. “ere was nothing anyone could do. It just happened and there was no reason,” Zhu said. “We lost everything. Luckily, the family was fine.” With help and donations from villagers, the family built a tiled-roof house, where they lived for 10 years. In 1983, they invested all of their savings to join a collective of residents to erect a residential building. “We lived there for three decades,” Zhu said. “In 2006, we took a big family picture right in front of it. I love that picture.” During their time in the resi- dential building, his son found a logistics job at a hospital in Nan- tong while his eldest daughter worked in an insurance com- pany. His youngest daughter found employment at a building management company. The couple then left the farmlands, with Zhu landing a factory job in the city and Ma with a village enterprise. As the city sprawl dramati- cally evolved, the Xuetian vil- lage became a part of the city’s Chongchuan district and the city’s core university area. In 2013, plans were issued to build a complex of shopping malls and food stores in the dis- trict. Chen Jianhua, an officer from the district, said a main street was expected to run right through the village, forcing more than 100 households out, including Zhu’s family. This year, Zhu’s family will move into a new, modern neighborhood. In January, on the day he received his apart- ment key, Zhu posted a cou- plet written on red paper on the apartment’s front door and assembled another family pho- to, this time with three genera- tions, in front of the building. “My granddaughter is now a primary school teacher and one of my two grandsons is studying at a university,” Zhu said. Since the mid-2000s, the Chi- nese government has advanced rural modernization. During the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006- 10), China proposed building a new socialist countryside that features advanced production methods and improved liveli- hoods. The plan created a civilized social atmosphere, clean villages and democratic administra- tions. It also proposed extend- ing the agricultural industrial chain to enable farmers to ben- efit more from the expansion of agriculture. Contact the writers through [email protected] Zhu family a portrait of Nantong’s modernization Soldiers from the border inspection station celebrate the elderly couple’s wedding anniversary. YIN BAOTIAN / FOR CHINA DAILY Nantong residents Zhu Haiming and his wife Ma Nianying in front of their home in 2006 (left) and this year. FILE PHOTO AND YOU LIAN / FOR CHINA DAILY
Transcript of Soldiers give home’s leprosy patients a lot to...
Nantong report A5Friday, March 25, 2016
Zhu Yongkang and Diao Ganglie, both of whom suffer from leprosy and live at an elderly welfare home in Nantong, celebrate their wedding at a nearby border inspection station. ZHANG SHANYU / FOR CHINA DAILY
Chief surgeon earnspraise from patientsand local colleagues
Chen Chang, chief surgeon at Nantong Sixth People’s Hospital
Zhu Yongkang and his wife Diao Ganglie had an unforgettable wed-ding anniversary in
late January.The elderly couple, both
leprosy patients at an elderly welfare home in Nantong, cel-ebrated their seven-year wed-ding anniversary with a group of soldiers whom they call “their sons”.
Leprosy is a chronic, infec-tious disease that can affect the nervous system and skin. It may cause a loss of sensation that sometimes leads to amputation.
The welfare home, one of the few in Nantong that receives leprosy patients, moved to its current location in 1996. As the disease often scars one’s facial appearance, neighbors at the time were afraid of the home, which is when the soldiers from the station from the Xinkai-gang Border Inspection Station decided to help.
Over the past 20 years, many of the soldiers spent a lot of time with Zhu and Diao.
Zhu, 72, has suffered from leprosy since he was 14. He became a member of the home in 1973. Diao, 67, was diag-nosed with the disease when she was 7. She was sent to the home
in 1974. They met at the home and soon became interested in each other. The soldiers in fact encouraged them to further their friendship.
Seven years ago, the couple were married in a ceremony arranged by the soldiers. This year, the soldiers celebrated the couple’s seven-year anniversary, affectionately calling the child-less couple their “mom and dad”.
They bought cake and candy and decorated the couple’s room at the home with red lanterns and roses. Surrounded by the young faces, the couple burst into tears when the candles were lit.
“These patients are mostly elderly people with no chil-dren,” said Ci Wanghua, head of the station. “If we didn’t help them, who else would?”
The soldiers regularly visit the home, often helping the elderly residents with their chores, such as cleaning rooms and washing clothes. Ci said spiritual conso-lation is also important for the patients, who rarely have visi-tors. Soldiers often talk to the home’s elderly people and lend them their ears.
The soldiers have also gained some public support to buy
blankets and clothing for the patients. To better provide aid and services, the soldiers installed an alarm bell linking their station with the home. If patients need assistance, they can sound the bell to call the soldiers.
Jiang Lie, a soldier from the Xinkaigang station, has worked at the station for eight years.
In 2014, he was promoted and relocated to another station. Soon afterward, Jiang gave up his promotion, telling his supe-riors, “These elderly people need me.”
Wang Xiuchong, a volunteer doctor who has provided free medical checks for the patients at the welfare home, said: “I have never seen anyone else like
these soldiers who provide con-stant services for the home in 20 years. There are many new faces among the soldiers as some are transferred to other stations over the years, but they always come to help at the home.”
Contact the writers through [email protected]
Soldiers give home’s leprosy patients a lot to celebrate
By Ding Congrong, Che Ke, Jiang Xingmao and Zhang LingLi
A leading thoracic sur-geon in East China has made a name for himself with his technically advanced surger-ies.
Chen Chang, 44, is the chief surgeon at the department of minimally invasive thoracic surgery at the Nantong Sixth People’s Hospital in Jiangsu province. He is also the vice-president of the Shanghai Pul-monary Hospital affiliated to Tongji University.
Chen graduated from the Nanjing University Medical School and received his doc-torate from the Suzhou Uni-versity Medical School.
With funding from the Chi-na Scholarship Council, Chen was a visiting scholar at Wash-ington University in St. Louis in the United States from 2002 to 2003 and participated in the research of bronchiolitis obliterans, an inflammation caused by lung transplanta-tions.
In September 2010, he attended a monthlong train-ing session at the department of thoracic surgery at the Uni-versity of Paris-Sud as a visit-ing scholar.
In December 2015, Chen was named a Leading Talent of Shanghai by the Shang-hai government, becoming the third thoracic surgeon to receive the honor in the metropolis.
Over the past 19 years, Chen has gained much experience in diagnosing lung tumors and treating lung cancer using the latest technologies.
Chen’s colleagues and patients speak highly of his professional expertise and work ethics.
Fan Gang, director of the department of minimally invasive thoracic surgery at Nantong Sixth People’s Hos-pital and who has worked with Chen on more than 200 oper-ations, said Chen is so skilled that it takes him an hour to finish a surgery that would normally take three hours.
Fan explained that Chen’s use of a single 3-centimeter cut on patients in thoracic sur-geries creates less bleeding and pain and enables patients to recover more quickly.
Surgeons in most of China’s grade-three hospitals — the highest-level public hospital — normally make three or
four cuts to perform such an operation, Fan said.
Chen’s technique is con-sidered advanced in Asia and across the world, he added.
With lung cancer on the rise in China, an increasing number of people are being diagnosed with lung nodules. When a 74-year-old patient surnamed Zhang in Haimen, Jiangsu province, was diag-nosed with advanced lung cancer in late 2015, his family was shocked. To make matters worse, doctors from the city told Zhang that surgery would be futile.
But after Zhang’s son took his father to Nantong Sixth People’s Hospital, the fam-ily was relieved when Chen’s examination of Zhang found that he suffered from lung nodules rather than lung cancer. He said he expected Zhang to survive thoraco-scopic surgery.
On Jan 23, Chen, Fan and Shi Weirong, a physician at the hospital, performed sur-gery on Zhang that took more than an hour. Zhang recov-ered smoothly and was dis-charged a week later to spend the Spring Festival holiday with his family.
When Zhang went for a post-op examination after the holidays, he was in tears. He told Chen: “I thought that it would be the end of my life before I saw you. I feel so grateful for your help. Being an impoverished patient, I was so honored to have a distin-guished medical expert care for me so much and waive off my medical fees.”
As the chief surgeon, Chen said he is constantly improv-ing the skills of members on his medical team.
“When we have questions about medical issues, Chen always shares his insights and views with us, which are sometimes enlightening,” Shi said. “He would also invite us to dinner after we completed several surgeries and discuss with us surgery-related issues that demand special attention.”
Since December 2013, the medical team headed by Chen has conducted thoracoscopic surgeries for more than 270 patients, which enabled the Nantong Sixth People’s Hos-pital to be ranked first among all hospitals in the city.
Contact the writers through [email protected]
Over past 20 years, welfare home has received big lift from nearby military station, Ding Congrong, Wu Yinhua and Yin Baotian report.
By Li Jing and You Lian
Zhu Hanming’s family has lived in Nantong for more than half a century. As the city becomes increasingly modern-ized, he has seen both the city and his family change.
Born in the small village of Xuetian in Nantong, Zhu, now 73, accomplished the then rare feat of finishing middle school. He then attended a short-term accountancy course and found a job as a work-point recorder on a collective farm in the vil-lage. He met his wife Ma Niany-ing there.
Ma, who is a year younger, said she fell in love at first sight.
“He was conscientious, had a good temper and a handsome face,” Ma recalled. “I never attended school and he was knowledgeable, a real intellec-tual in my eyes.”
After a year, 20-year-old Zhu married 19-year-old Ma. She gave birth to three children, a boy and two girls.
But life was no piece of cake. Their first house was a hum-ble straw hut. One winter day in 1973, a fire broke out and
destroyed the hut — nothing was left.
“There was nothing anyone could do. It just happened and there was no reason,” Zhu said. “We lost everything. Luckily, the family was fine.”
With help and donations from villagers, the family built a tiled-roof house, where they lived for 10 years.
In 1983, they invested all of their savings to join a collective of residents to erect a residential building.
“We lived there for three decades,” Zhu said. “In 2006, we took a big family picture right in front of it. I love that picture.”
During their time in the resi-dential building, his son found a logistics job at a hospital in Nan-tong while his eldest daughter worked in an insurance com-pany. His youngest daughter found employment at a building management company.
The couple then left the farmlands, with Zhu landing a factory job in the city and Ma
with a village enterprise.As the city sprawl dramati-
cally evolved, the Xuetian vil-lage became a part of the city’s Chongchuan district and the city’s core university area.
In 2013, plans were issued to build a complex of shopping malls and food stores in the dis-trict. Chen Jianhua, an officer from the district, said a main street was expected to run right through the village, forcing more than 100 households out, including Zhu’s family.
This year, Zhu’s family will move into a new, modern neighborhood. In January, on the day he received his apart-ment key, Zhu posted a cou-plet written on red paper on the apartment’s front door and assembled another family pho-to, this time with three genera-tions, in front of the building.
“My granddaughter is now a primary school teacher and one of my two grandsons is studying at a university,” Zhu said.
Since the mid-2000s, the Chi-nese government has advanced rural modernization. During the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10), China proposed building a new socialist countryside that features advanced production methods and improved liveli-hoods.
The plan created a civilized social atmosphere, clean villages and democratic administra-tions. It also proposed extend-ing the agricultural industrial chain to enable farmers to ben-efit more from the expansion of agriculture.
Contact the writers through [email protected]
Zhu family a portrait of Nantong’s modernization
Soldiers from the border inspection station celebrate the elderly couple’s wedding anniversary.YIN BAOTIAN / FOR CHINA DAILY
Nantong residents Zhu Haiming and his wife Ma Nianying in front of their home in 2006 (left) and this year. FILE PHOTO AND YOU LIAN / FOR CHINA DAILY
