Beijing medics provide free treatment to patients in NE China

(ECNS) -- About 140 medical workers from Beijing set up free clinics and distributed medicine for patients of various ethnic groups in over 10 townships in Aihui District of Heihe City, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province on Monday.

Local patients visited the clinics very early, bearing their previous examination results.

Aihui District is located in the northern part of Heilongjiang, across the river from Blagoveshchensk of Russia, with 26 ethnic groups living there, including the Han, Man, Daur and Oroqen. Though residents’ living conditions have improved a lot, it is still hard for them to access excellent medical resources. 

Patient Liu Wanjun expressed his gratitude to the doctors. Arriving with his electrocardiogram and lumbar X-ray film, he received more concrete advice from doctors.

“We benefited a lot from free clinics. Usually, it is not easy for us to see a doctor,” said Liu.

A woman called An Kang said these convenient free clinics  include experts from different departments able to provide diversified diagnoses, making it unnecessary to visit the hospital.

"We don’t have enough time to host free clinics so we have to work as quickly as possible to serve the most patients and we don’t feel tired,” said Wang Lei, an orthopedic expert, adding that they would like to do more for them.

According to Wang, the incidence of bone and joint diseases is high among locals. “It will be helpful if township-level hospitals could be equipped with more X-ray detection equipment and do basic examinations in time.”

He noted that the Chinese government has improved the proportion of medical insurance reimbursement for osteoarthritis treatment, and patients can save a lot of money. However, they don’t know how such policies work. “We need to popularize these policies to address their worries,” he said.

Yang Xiaomei, a doctor from Shangdi Hospital, said that she hopes to know the medical resources and people's health awareness in remote areas through this voluntary activity.

“There is a long way to go in health knowledge popularization,” she said, citing an example of an old woman whose blood pressure has reached 220mmHg but to no concern.

She hopes to continue to participate in health public welfare activities to help more people, she said.

At the free clinics, medical volunteers have distributed drugs worth about one million yuan to local patients free of charge. They also visited needy families, including orphans’ homes and disabled families to carry out diagnosis and treatment service.