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24 hours in Wuhan: Chinese medical workers confronting NCP

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24 hours in Wuhan: Chinese medical workers confronting NCP

February 18
02:01 2020

Provided by Wang Luwei, reporter of Sichuan Medical Aid Team of Hubei Province

84-year-old Zhong Nanshan once again became a hero in the hearts of the Chinese people.Provided by Wang Luwei, reporter of Sichuan Medical Aid Team of Hubei Province

In the fight against SARS 17 years ago, he became the public figure most trusted by Chinese for his outspokenness and courage in assuming responsibility.

As the emotions of anxiety and panic spread throughout the country with the escalation of the epidemic, he again was entrusted with a mission at this critical moment and took up the post of leader the Senior Expert Group of the National Health Commission. In the early development of the epidemic, he led the top medical experts of China in rushing to Wuhan.

But the old man is not lonely. Behind him are 23103 members in 190 medical teams from all the other provinces and cities. The medical staff fighting agaisnt NCP at the forefront have now become the people who the Chinese people are most concerned about and grateful to. On Twitter, the reading quantity of the topic “Saluting the medical staff fighting at the forefront” reached 270 million because of the netizens who tried to express their care and support for the medical staff.

24 hours of extremity: medical staff working under overload

By 24:00 on February 13, China had cumulatively reported 55748 confirmed cases, including 35991 in Wuhan. Faced with the sudden outbreak, the medical sector is forced to operate under overload, with forefront nurses rotating in 6-hour shift and doctors in 8-hour shfit. The shfit is even longer in some seriously understaffed small hospitals.

The epidemic broke out during the Spring Festival when the manufacturing industry of China stopped production, leading to the extremely supply of protective suit, goggles and breathing marks. At first, many doctors could change their protective suits only once in more than 10 hours. In the work of high intensity, the protective suits will be saturated with sweat. Each time they are taken off, the medical staff will look wet all over as if they had just taken a bath. Since they cannot eat or drink anything or go to the washroom after putting on the protective suits, the medical staff have to eat some high-calorie food, such as chocolate, and drink less water each time before starting their work to reduce the misery brought by holdback of urine. They will even put on diapers just in case. The tight protective measures are airproof. With the elapse of time, the medical staff may be infected with skin disease, or suffer pressure trauma and even blood stain.

Many of the medical staff members fighting at the forefront were born after 1995. Before the outbreak, they were deemes as the youngest generation of the Chinese society and often linked up with words such as immaturity and childishness. But the epidemic enabled the society to see their righteous ardour. Sun Qin is a 21-year-old assistant nurse. In an interview with the Papernews, she said that this is her first year of employment; she was frightened at the beginning and worried about being infected; but, she was afraid no longer seeing how her colleagues cheered and encouraged one another.

Dr. Wu Xiaoyan was originally on a trip back to her hometown for the Spring Festival. But, hearing about the outbreak, she got off midway to return to Wuhan. “I am unmarried and under no burden of looking after a child. Everyone is now fighting. I can celebrate the festival feeling at ease only on the battlefield,” she said. These young medical staff always stand at the forefront. In the workgroup of the People’s Hospital of Wuhan University, a young doctor sent a message to her superior: “Give me a call if any need arises. I can work overtime. But don’t tell my Mom about it to avoid making her worried.”

Caring for female medical staff: Feminists making heart-warming remarks

This time, females account for 50% of the doctors and 90% of the nurses resisting the epidemic at the forefront. Every day, they provide the patients with injection, infusion, sputum aspiration, airway care and life care. These highly dangerous operations increased their risks of infection. While their bravery and dedication are encouraging Chinese females in social media, their physical health has received more attention. Twitter blogger Liang Yu teamed up with Wuxi Lingshan Charity Foundation in launching the campaign of “Sisters in worriless fight against the outbreak”, in which they donated 183040 comfort pants, 7800 pads, 3156 pairs of disposable knickers for females and 700 hand creams to 26 hospitals in Hubei.

The campaign attracted the attention and response of many females. “This is not a special need. Instead, it is the normal basic need of 50% of the population, ” someone commented.

The voices demanding care for the physiological needs of females are also valued by the Chinese government. As a national-level public welfare organization that focuses on serving females, the China Women’s Development Foundation also collected 2.25 million yuan worth of funds and goods urgently in a short period of time for targeted assistance to the female medical staff at the forefront, including 200,000 yuan earmarked for purchasing comfort pants, 1 million yuan worth of pads in 2020 cases, 20,000 comfort pants and 1 million yuan worth of long underwear.

Red bruises making a hit online and drawing online support to medical workers

This epidemic has quietly changed the ideas of the Chinese people for the medical workers. Before the reform of the medical system, the trust was not high between Chinese patients and medical workers. Furthermore, the absence of death education caused people to always hold excessive expectations for modern treatment and have difficulty in calmly accepting the results of hospital diagnosis and treatment, even leading to conflict with doctors.

These days, however, common Chinese people are praising the medical staff on the Internet.

On January 28, Guo Wei, a member of the medical team from the Military Medical University of Air Force took off the protective suit that she had worn for a day to reveal her swollen face and the deep traces left by the goggles, which was really heartbreaking. The scene was captured by her teammate and made into a short video that was transmitted to the Internet, drawing a reading quantity of more than 280 million.

“Trusting, loving and respecting doctors. They are no God, but merely a group of kids in different clothes, who model themselves after their predecessors in curing diseases, saving patients and racing with Azrael.” This comment expressed the common thinking of many people and triggered extensive retransmission. Besides, the reform of the medical system, the health of medical workers and their protection have also found their way into the topics that common people are most concerned about.

The medical staff at the forefront are in acute shortage of protective suits and breathing masks. All sectors of China are busy making contacts to gather materials. Seeing the difficulty in purchasing breathing masks, Zhao Puzhou, a businessman from Zhejiang, acquired a factory near Phnom Penh Airport in Cambodia, which now produces 100,000 breathing masks every day that are all sent to China. He undertook not to raise the price before the epidemic ends. A worker named Hao Jin from Changde used to work in a mask factory before the Spring Festival. Because of poor benefits, the boss could not but give him 15000 masks as setoff for wages. Despite the unexpected general price markup caused by the outbreak, the young man donated all his own masks. In an interview after he became an online celebrity, he said: “I will accept no more interview in future and need no donations from net friends. I didn’t think of these questions when making the donation. The government offered to pay for the masks, but I refused. Hope I won’t be disturbed.”

On Twitter, netizens started the topic of “Backing for medical workers”. On the romantic day of Valentine’s Day that falls on February 14, many net friends wrote love letters to medical workers. “Thank you for jacking up life with your own life. Thank you for the protection you provide against the wind. Flowers will bloom more brilliantly thanks to you.”

As Camus said: “Even life is a disaster, we should fight it with love.” In Wuhan under the spell of NCP, these medical workers at the forefront have enabled us to see such dazzling light of humanity. It has once again proven what Kissinger said in his ‘On China’, China is always well protected by the bravest among them.”

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