Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    SHENZHEN’S only cancer hospital that was put into trial operation a year ago, will officially open after the Spring Festival as a group of famed cancer treatment specialists from Beijing will start accepting patients there, the hospital president said at a press conference Friday.

    The hospital, located not far from the Shenzhen Universiade Center in Longgang District, was initially built as Baohe Hospital before it was renamed Shenzhen Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Cancer Hospital in 2015 under the guidelines of the city’s Sanming Project, which brings in established outside medical resources to improve the city’s own.

    “Starting Feb. 3, roughly 20 established doctors from Beijing will start accepting patients in our hospital,” said Wang Luhua, president of the hospital and also a radiotherapy expert from the Beijing hospital, told reporters. “They will station here for a minimum of five years according to the agreement between the Shenzhen government and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Cancer Hospital. I believe most of them will stay longer than that.”

    The first phase of the hospital, with 800 beds, covers an area of more than 96,000 square meters and has a construction area of 141,288 square meters, according to Wang. Construction on the second phase of the hospital has started, and expects to bring the number of beds up to 2,000 when it is completed in 2020. The second phase will include a proton therapy and heavy-ion therapy center, Wang said.

    Medical devices worth 200 million yuan (US$29 million) have been installed and another 576 million yuan of medical equipment is expected to come before 2020, he said.

    “Shenzhen’s capacity for cancer treatment is far from meeting the demand, and a large proportion of cancer patients go outside the city for treatment,” said Wang. Wang cited the radiotherapy facilities as an example, saying that there are less than 10 such facilities in Shenzhen, while the global standard is an average of two to four such facilities for every million people.

    Aiming to develop the hospital into a well-known cancer hospital in the Southeast Asia region within five to 10 years, Wang said three top cancer treatment teams led by Dr. He Jie, Dr. Sun Yan and himself have started working there. Free cancer diagnosis will be offered at the hospital next month and application details will be unveiled later, he said.