Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    ROUGHLY 3,500 pediatricians from around the globe will show up in Shenzhen at a biennial world congress for infectious diseases that will be held in China for the first time in December next year, organizers said yesterday.

    Representatives of the World Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases (WSPID), a confederation of pediatric infectious disease societies around the world, and Shenzhen Children’s Hospital signed a memorandum of agreement yesterday to task the hospital with organizing the 10th World Congress for Pediatric Infectious Diseases from Dec. 2 to 5 in 2017.

    The congress, which will take place at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, has been under preparation for a year, since Jim Buttery, president of WSPID, visited the hospital and the Shenzhen convention center Dec. 21 last year, said Zhong Shan, president of the hospital.

    It will be the first time that the congress is held in China and organized by a hospital, said Prof. Ronald de Groot, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands and a member of the WSPID committee.

    “It’s impressive to see that this hospital has 1,300 beds,” said Prof. Groot. “It’s larger than any [children’s] hospital I know in Europe and in the United States. It will be very interesting for colleagues from other countries and continents to come here to see how pediatrics is organized. It’s also a learning opportunity for us and at the same time it will allow Shenzhen to bring in international speakers from all areas of the field of pediatric infectious diseases.”

    Groot said that his society was working with Shenzhen Children’s Hospital in many ways to develop the congress for next year, including welcoming more Chinese and Asian speakers to fit the regional need.

    Infectious diseases are a major cause of illness and death among children under 5 years old, according to Zheng Yuejie, director of the hospital’s respiratory department. More than 70 percent of the outpatients the hospital receives and up to 60 percent of inpatients suffer from infectious diseases.

Caption:

Zhang Wenjian (L), general manager of the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, shakes hands with Perry Gil-Ran (R), senior account manager of Kenes Group and a representative of the World Congress for Pediatric Infectious Diseases, while Zhong Shan (2nd L), president of Shenzhen Children’s Hospital, and Prof. Ronald de Groot, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands and a member of the WSPID committee, look on after the two sides signed a memorandum of agreement at Shenzhen Children’s Hospital yesterday. Li Bo