Workers assemble the CT device on the CT production line of Neusoft Medical Systems Co., Ltd., Shenyang, Liaoning Province, March 16, 2018.
BEIJING, April 23 (Xinhua) -- What is it like having a brush with death?
In 2014, the West Africa was overwhelmed by the Ebola virus with fast changing epidemic situation. It is a virulent infectious virus that may cause Ebola hemorrhagic fever with a mortality of 90 percent of infected people. Since there are no vaccines and therapies, it is listed as one of the most vicious viruses to humans by the World Health Organization.
In the China-Guinea Friendship Hospital located in Conakry, the capital city of Guinea, doctors were distressed about the failure of the only CT device. In order to treat Ebola, doctors need to scan the patient's head with a CT image to check for intracranial hemorrhage, one of the symptoms of patients with the Ebola virus. At such an important moment, the CT device had image artifacts and the local foreign aid technical team had no maintenance experience.
The device was offered by Shenyang Neusoft Medical Systems Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Neusoft") headquartered in Shenyang, northeast China. Learning about the situation, Zhou Wenhua, an engineer with Neusoft, accepted the maintenance task and boarded the plane to Guinea without hesitation.
On the second day after arriving in Guinea, Zhou Wenhua and his technical team were informed that the Ebola virus had a tendency to spread in a large scale. He recalled that his technical team received a batch of masks, gloves and disinfectant fluid after returning to the encampment that day. They heard that dozens of people in provinces adjacent to Sierra Leone and Liberia had been infected by the Ebola virus. A depressed atmosphere enveloped the whole encampment.
Later, Zhou Wenhua and his colleagues learned that the first Ebola patient in Conakry was diagnosed in China-Guinea Friendship Hospital. The patient died only three days after diagnosis, and one of the medical staff having contact with the patient was from China's medical team. On the night when the head of the Chinese medical team came to the encampment for a meeting with the technical team, everyone felt the noticeable tension. To avoid possible infection, they did not shake hands with each other. The head introduced the situation of the device and epidemic in the hospital three meters away from the technical team, and asked them to wear long coats and trousers, masks and gloves and not to contact with local people in the hospital.
At that time, Zhou Wenhua could evacuate, but he and his colleagues chose to stay in the encampment because they knew that doctors and patients were eagerly expecting the smooth operation of devices. "I have come here from afar. It is my mission and duty to make the device function well," he said, "It surely will be difficult and stressful, but I cannot give up repairing the device. I feel worried that patients may miss the treatment opportunity and even die due to inaccurate diagnosis."
After consulting with the technical team, Zhou Wenhua decided to rush to the hospital that very night. The device returned to normal use after his efforts. It was already midnight when he came back to the encampment without worries.
Wherever there is a need, whether in Guinea struck by Ebola virus, or in the war-torn Somalia, there are always medical equipment engineers from China.
According to Zhou Wenhua, the CT device in Guinea was earlier product of Neusoft and at that time, its technical parameters and configuration were relatively advanced and its price was much lower than that of most countries. In the later stage, the device can achieve accurate remote judgment, remote fault warning and troubleshooting, and obtain full-time remote online technical support through the Neusoft remote service platform. As a result, problems can be solved within hours.
To better serve China-Guinea Friendship Hospital and other global clients, Neusoft forms a set of medical service solutions through hardware equipment, clinical software, specialized diagnosis and treatment solution and service integration. Based on the image cloud platform and AI technologies, Neusoft has achieved the connectivity among equipment, combined the specialized diagnosis and treatment solutions with equipment and offered clinical methodologies, experience, therapies, expert remote diagnosis for over 9,000 users in more than 110 countries and regions worldwide and over 50 countries along the Belt and Road routes, paving a health Silk Road with technologies and services.
"For countries with inadequate medical care facilities, we have assisted them in planning the image center, training medical staff from their top-level hospitals and managing the allocation of radiology equipment and offered them other targeted services, solving several local problems such as the weakness in diagnostic techniques, the lack of professional personnel, the aging of equipment and the high cost," the related head of Neusoft said. Over the years, Neusoft has trained more than 300 high-end medical imaging application specialists and high-end medical equipment operators for the Belt and Road countries.
Neusoft has set up five research and development institutions around the world, possessed over 1,000 self-developed patents, and established long-term strategic partnership with many top-level medical institutions from home and abroad to jointly build clinical innovation and training centers and improve the level of clinical scientific research and academic exchanges.
Zhou Wenhua and his colleagues are just the representatives of various high-end medical equipment servers. In other places hit by severe epidemic situation, wars and poverty, there is a group of ordinary people behind each Made-in-China medical equipment making extraordinary deeds. They always believe that nothing is more important than life, and adhere to the original intention of building a health Silk Road and contributing to human health through information technology. (Contributed by Li Zhilan, Cui Mingming, edited by Hu Pingchao)
A single purchase
