Feature: Chinese Doctors in Sudan Stand Up to Rift Valley Fever

Feature: Chinese doctors in Sudan stand up to Rift Valley Fever

KHARTOUM, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) — In face of the potentially deadlyvirus of the Rift Valley Fever (RVF), a Chinese medical team working in one of the RVF-hit Sudanese states put lives on the line and chose to fight the disease alongside with locals.

“We can not leave here now because this is the time that we areextremely needed by the local residents to help them overcome the epidemic disease,” a team member told Xinhua recently.

The medical team, including eight doctors and one chef, has been since October fighting the fatal disease in Abu Osher Hospital in Jazeera, one of the three Sudanese states reporting RVF cases.

According to the latest report of the World Health Organization(WHO), the RVF virus was spreading in Sudan. By Nov. 7, Sudan has reported 228 RVF cases with 84 deaths.

Fifteen sites in White Nile, Sennar, and Jazeera states in central and eastern Sudan have been affected by the disease, whichis transmitted by contact with the blood or organs of infected animals, the WHO said in the statement.

The RVF virus can also be carried by mosquitoes.

Herders, farmers, veterinarians, and slaughterhouse workers aredeemed at higher risk of infection from the disease, which can devastate livestock.

There is no specific treatment or effective human vaccine, so it is important to raise awareness of risk factors and ensure thatpeople take protective measures to prevent exposure, the WHO said.

Liu Jing, a woman physician in the Chinese team, is facing the highest danger of being infected since she receives every day morethan 50 patients of various internal diseases.

In spite of the WHO reports, Liu goes to the department of internal medicine every morning and works there until all the patients, waiting in a long queue in the corridor outside the clinic, are diagnosed.

After that, she will inspect the inpatients, who have been moved to the external medical wards because the internal wards hadbeen totally isolated in a preparation to receive RVF patients.

But when the epidemic broke out in October in Sudan, Liu’s hospital were caught totally unprepared.

On Oct. 30, the first suspect RVF case was sent into Abu Osher Hospital. But he was soon moved to another hospital in the Medini city because Abu Osher was not ready at that time to treat any RVFpatient.

Last week, another suspect RVF cases was hospitalized in Abu Osher and died in the following day in the hospital.

Since the Chinese doctors had no idea about the RVF before coming to Sudan in August, the death made them feel nervous. But they managed to hide their fear and chose to continue their work as usual.

Li Jinfeng, a gynaecologist, is respectfully called by her colleagues as “iron woman” because she is carrying out the hardestworks, including emergency operations at midnight besides daytime work in the clinic and operation room.

The team in Abu Osher Hospital is part of a 30-member Chinese medical group, which was sent in by China to replace their predecessors who had worked in the African country for two years.

Since mid 1970s, the Chinese government has sent successive batches of doctors to Sudan as well as other African countries in a bid to provide medical assistances to local people and help these countries to promote the medical conditions.

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