sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
Insufficient beds, lack of medical care, and no ventilators. How can rural areas cope with the shock?
13:41, January 16, 2023 Media Scroll
Source: China News Weekly
Insufficient beds, lack of medical staff
Without ventilators and ECMO...
The rural epidemic is attracting attention
A doctor who graduated from a technical secondary school is responsible for the public health and medical needs of 1,400 people in 9 villages. When the epidemic hit, he only had a few boxes of "999 Ganmaoling Granules" and 30 antigens in his toolbox. It is a microcosm of rural epidemic prevention.
During the three years of the epidemic, no fever patients have been treated here, and there is no stock of medicines. It is even more difficult for antiviral medicines to reach this remote mountainous village. The only oxygen generator was purchased by the village doctor for more than 3,000 yuan. In contrast, rural areas have more elderly people who do not have physical examinations all year round and have more underlying diseases, and rural life has more gathering activities, weaker awareness of protection, and more backward information channels. After the epidemic prevention and control is "released", all these current situations point to a more serious reality.
I interviewed and wrote "How to Respond to Shocks in Rural Areas?" "More than ten days have passed, and severe cases of the new crown are emerging in the countryside. At the end of December, 10 ICU beds in a county hospital in northeastern Henan were operating at full capacity. The county hospital continued to receive patients from rural areas, but the hospital was unable to treat or transfer patients because the ICU of the higher-level hospital was also full.
From a medical perspective, COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, which is not difficult to diagnose and treat. Tong Zhaohui, deputy director of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital and director of the Beijing Institute of Respiratory Diseases, said that the clinical treatment of respiratory failure caused by pneumonia is very mature. As long as the treatment is timely, the doctor can deal with it in time, inhale oxygen, and use non-invasive breathing. Machines, invasive ventilators, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) can be used in severe cases. A considerable number of patients can improve.
However, limited by the level of medical treatment and equipment conditions, the treatment of new crowns in rural areas is another situation. The township health centers I know do not have ventilators and CT equipment at all, let alone rural areas. In county-level hospitals, even in the ICU, only about half of the beds are equipped with ventilators, because in normal years, most of the serious illnesses at the grassroots level are chronic diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cardiovascular disease.
Insufficient beds, lack of medical staff, no ventilators and ECMO... The rural epidemic is causing concern. The epidemiological and virological results that the pathogenicity of the new coronavirus has been greatly reduced cannot conceal the actual impact of the epidemic on rural areas.
In fact, the challenges of medical resources and life and health in rural areas are not only due to the epidemic, but there is no doubt that the new crown pandemic is like a contrast agent, magnifying the weak link in China's medical system that has existed for many years. Unlike community medical care, which is widely available in developed countries, China's medical resources are extremely unevenly concentrated in large cities and large hospitals. Since the medical reform in 2009, China has been committed to strengthening the grassroots. However, due to various realities and related systems, the sinking of medical resources has not been realized.
Since SARS in 2003, China is once again facing the most serious public health event of this century, especially in the worrying battlefield of the countryside.
zhttps://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/2023-01-16/doc-imyakiei0990436.shtml?cre=tianyi&mod=pcpager_news&loc=32&r=0&rfunc=90&tj=cxvertical_pc_pager_news&tr=174
13:41, January 16, 2023 Media Scroll
Source: China News Weekly
Insufficient beds, lack of medical staff
Without ventilators and ECMO...
The rural epidemic is attracting attention
A doctor who graduated from a technical secondary school is responsible for the public health and medical needs of 1,400 people in 9 villages. When the epidemic hit, he only had a few boxes of "999 Ganmaoling Granules" and 30 antigens in his toolbox. It is a microcosm of rural epidemic prevention.
During the three years of the epidemic, no fever patients have been treated here, and there is no stock of medicines. It is even more difficult for antiviral medicines to reach this remote mountainous village. The only oxygen generator was purchased by the village doctor for more than 3,000 yuan. In contrast, rural areas have more elderly people who do not have physical examinations all year round and have more underlying diseases, and rural life has more gathering activities, weaker awareness of protection, and more backward information channels. After the epidemic prevention and control is "released", all these current situations point to a more serious reality.
I interviewed and wrote "How to Respond to Shocks in Rural Areas?" "More than ten days have passed, and severe cases of the new crown are emerging in the countryside. At the end of December, 10 ICU beds in a county hospital in northeastern Henan were operating at full capacity. The county hospital continued to receive patients from rural areas, but the hospital was unable to treat or transfer patients because the ICU of the higher-level hospital was also full.
From a medical perspective, COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, which is not difficult to diagnose and treat. Tong Zhaohui, deputy director of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital and director of the Beijing Institute of Respiratory Diseases, said that the clinical treatment of respiratory failure caused by pneumonia is very mature. As long as the treatment is timely, the doctor can deal with it in time, inhale oxygen, and use non-invasive breathing. Machines, invasive ventilators, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) can be used in severe cases. A considerable number of patients can improve.
However, limited by the level of medical treatment and equipment conditions, the treatment of new crowns in rural areas is another situation. The township health centers I know do not have ventilators and CT equipment at all, let alone rural areas. In county-level hospitals, even in the ICU, only about half of the beds are equipped with ventilators, because in normal years, most of the serious illnesses at the grassroots level are chronic diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cardiovascular disease.
Insufficient beds, lack of medical staff, no ventilators and ECMO... The rural epidemic is causing concern. The epidemiological and virological results that the pathogenicity of the new coronavirus has been greatly reduced cannot conceal the actual impact of the epidemic on rural areas.
In fact, the challenges of medical resources and life and health in rural areas are not only due to the epidemic, but there is no doubt that the new crown pandemic is like a contrast agent, magnifying the weak link in China's medical system that has existed for many years. Unlike community medical care, which is widely available in developed countries, China's medical resources are extremely unevenly concentrated in large cities and large hospitals. Since the medical reform in 2009, China has been committed to strengthening the grassroots. However, due to various realities and related systems, the sinking of medical resources has not been realized.
Since SARS in 2003, China is once again facing the most serious public health event of this century, especially in the worrying battlefield of the countryside.
zhttps://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/2023-01-16/doc-imyakiei0990436.shtml?cre=tianyi&mod=pcpager_news&loc=32&r=0&rfunc=90&tj=cxvertical_pc_pager_news&tr=174