Project HOPE Trained Health Professionals Provide Care Where Needed in China

May 12, 2008 will never be forgotten by the Chinese people. It will be remembered, and vividly so, much in the same way that those in U.S. remember the day of President Kennedy's death and the attack on the World Trade Towers. The earthquake, in Sichuan Province, dwarfed another health disaster, occurring at the same time to the east, in Anhui Province.

Anhui Province was dealing with an outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD), a viral epidemic, principally effecting children. Its presentations were severe, from pulmonary edema to respiratory failure. Over 10,000 patients were stricken, and 26 died from the complications of this illness.

Project HOPE Trained Medical Professionals Offer Help

Two experts, a physician and a nurse trained by Project HOPE, were deployed from the Shanghai Children's Medical Center to the Anhui Province. Both were HOPE Fellows in the past. Dr. Li Bi Yu received training at the Schneider Children’s Hospital in Israel, and Nurse Wang Hue Yong was trained at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong. Dr. Li is a well recognized physician educator and, because of this, is respectfully called "Pearl of HOPE."

Health Education Key to Successful 25 Year Relationship Between Project HOPE and China

This served as a reminder of the significance of 1983--to HOPE and to China. Our now 25 year relationship began with an invitation, in 1983, from a network of universities, to establish medical and nursing education programs in China. From 1983, when we accepted the invitation of the Shanghai Second Medical University and Xin Hua Hospital to help in creating a pediatric cardiovascular center at Xin Hua Hospital, and 1984, when we helped develop a pediatric and neonatal intensive care unit in Hangzhou, in collaboration with Zhejiang Medical University, to 2008, when we will soon announce, in Beijing, a community-based diabetes training program, involving partners in 31 provinces, HOPE has trained over 200,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers in China.

A most recent example of our education programs was seen, just this week, in the International Children's Hospital CEO Forum at the Shanghai Children's Hospital. Speakers included Professor Joseph Press, the President of Schneider Children's Hospital in Israel, Steve Rusckowski, the CEO of Philips Healthcare and a HOPE Board member, and Dr. Shen Xiaoming, the Vice Mayor of Shanghai. Nearly 60 CEOs of children's hospitals, from throughout China, attended this daylong conference.

The presentations included "Past and Future of Hospital and Health Care Administration in China." "Current Medical Equipment Demands in Children's Hospitals," "Strategy Planning for Hospital Specialty Development," and "A Primary Immunodeficiency (PID) Genetic Diagnostic Network for Asia," among other topics of current interest in China.

One of the Conference banquet attendees, the head of higher education in Shanghai, underscored the importance of international education to the current Chinese leaders. He, himself, received his doctorate in physics in the U.K. (Manchester) on a scholarship. In his present position, influenced by his own experience, he has created 45 scholarships for outstanding foreign students to come to Shanghai for their graduate degrees.

This day was yet another example of the "bridge to peace" that comes with the sharing of health and education across time zones--and oceans.