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Jiang Lijuan, born in 1950, the standing director of the China Medical Doctor Association and a professor at Tongren Hospital in Beijing, devotes herself to preventing, alleviating and curing eye disease sufferers in rural areas.
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Jiang Lijuan makes a check-up for a patient. [Photos/bjby.bjwmb.gov.cn] |
She graduated from the Department of Medicine of Peking University in 1978, and became an intern in Beijing Railway Hospital.
One day, two little girls from rural areas caught her attention. They had lost their sight because of a curable eye disease but could not afford the surgery. One of them cried and asked her "please help me; I want to go to school like everyone else".
In order to get the full picture of residents at risk of curable blindness in rural areas and to help them, Jiang Lijuan decided to be a doctor in Shunyi, a suburban district of Beijing, in 1980. From 1980 to 1985, Jiang Lijuan and her colleagues have conducted a survey on blindness prevention on over 100,000 people in the district.
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Jiang Lijuan conducts an operation for a patient. |
Based on these survey data, China’s first eye disease control and prevention center in a rural area was founded in Shunyi district in 1987.
In addition to carrying out a general survey and prevention activities for 540,000 residents in this area, Jiang Lijuan also provided free training programs to 499 doctors, with the help of Xiehe Hospital, Tongren Hospital and Peking University Hospital. About 16,700 cataract sufferers have been cured.
Jiang Lijuan also helped to set up China’s first country-level amblyopic and strabismus treatment center in 1989, with which she and her colleagues collected 5,000 copies of reports on eye diseases on 80,000 children, Then, they provided medical care for more than 5,700 children.
The "small-incision cataract surgery" (SICS) created by Jiang Lijuan allows "sutureless" incision closure and takes only five minutes. Shorter operating times and significantly low costs with SICS makes it one of the most commonly performed procedures in China.
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Jiang Lijuan is screening cataracts for residents in poverty-stricken areas. |
As one of the specialists from the Ministry of Health, Jiang Lijuan, leading the national medical team, performed cataract surgeries for 56,700 people in poverty-stricken areas across China, including Tibet autonomous region, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and Shanxi province.
She also advocated the "Lifeline Express", a mobile eye hospital bringing advanced medical techniques to the north-west areas and offering free training to 1649 minority nationality ophthalmologists.
In June 2014, an eight-member medical team headed for Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region from Beijing. During the 15-day tour, Jiang Lijuan and other specialists treated about 600 patients and performed 150 eye surgeries for free, as well as donating much needed surgical equipment, including two sets of ophthalmic operating microscopes worth 200,000 yuan($32,573).
