Zhang Yu JeniZhang13@163.com THE first batch of 13 medical members from Shenzhen set off yesterday afternoon to aid the coronavirus control efforts in Hubei Province, the epicenter of the current epidemic. The team consists of four doctors and nine nurses from five hospitals, covering major departments including intensive care, respiratory medicine, and infectious diseases and nursing. The eldest medic in the team is 51 years old and the youngest 27. Shenzhen Party chief Wang Weizhong and Mayor Chen Rugui saw the medical team off. Meng Xinke, chief physician of the department of intensive care at the Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital, is the leader of the medical team. Meng participated in the fight against the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003. With 20 years of experience in emergency treatment, Meng said during a Jan. 23 interview that he was ready to fight on the frontline of the outbreak in Hubei and has been tracking the status of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) outbreak and learning relevant diagnosis and treatment plans since. Meng said the doctors on the team are mainly responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of NCP, and the nurses selected to assist them are very experienced in treating critically ill patients. Long Xiang, another team member, is the deputy chief physician of respiratory medicine at the Peking University Shenzhen Hospital as well as a native of Hubei. Wuhan, Long proclaimed, is her “second hometown” as she had pursued her undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral studies in the capital of Hubei. “I received education at two medical schools in Wuhan. Both the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University and Tongji Hospital of Huazhong University of Science and Technology gave me professional training. Now I should also make my contributions to my alma maters and the hospitals and people of Wuhan,” Long said. Hu Dingling, the youngest member in the medical team, is a senior nurse at the department of intensive care at the Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital. Hu said she had proposed that the hospital send medics to the frontline Jan. 29, the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, and received the notice to head to Wuhan on Saturday night. The medical team left Shenzhen for Guangzhou to join the third provincial medical team to Hubei at Baiyun International Airport yesterday afternoon, before they boarded the plane bound for Wuhan.
Local Daily Report Total: 366 New: 2 Recovered: 46 Death toll: 0 | 