A project carried out by the Italian Government as part of its humanitarian aid to developing countries has helped Chinese doctors save the lives of local children and improve the quality of medical services available to them.
The success of the programme - the Italy-Beijing Children's Emergency Rescue Financial Aid Project - led to a decision made Thursday in Beijing at a meeting of officials with the Co-operation and Development Department of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to extend the programme for another year, according to Pierluigi Cecchi, branch project manager at the Beijing Children's Hospital.
The US$30 million spent by the Italian Government to provide medical equipment and training for China has reached children's hospitals and emergency centres in Beijing, North China's Taiyuan, Southwest China's Chongqing, East China's Shanghai and Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
Wang Lei, a 33-year-old doctor at the Emergency Rescue Centre of the Beijing Children's Hospital, said that a high-frequency ventilator had helped her save the life of a Chinese child.
Other equipment the project has provided to the centre includes observation equipment, super B scanners and emergency rescue beds, according to the centre's director, Li Kehua.
During 11 such training classes in the past three years, 600 of Wang's Chinese colleagues studied emergency rescue, medical ethics and computer sciences with the help of their Italian teachers.
One of their recent teachers was Marcello Orzalesi, a professor with the Baby Jesus Children's Hospital of Rome, a distinguished paediatric hospital in Italy.
Cecchi said in the next year the project will benefit more hospitals in the country including those in inland regions such as Jiangxi, Guizhou and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
(China Daily June 7, 2002)
