http://www.bjreview.com MARCH 12, 2020 BEIJING REVIEW 25
The Chinese version of the report was first published
in China Pictorial
Copyedited by Rebeca Toledo
Comments to [email protected]NATION
ernization of public health governance and
proposed a series of targeted suggestions and
solutions.
The Tongji Medical College is among
the top medical colleges in China. It has
trained many renowned doctors who are
now academicians.
The college’s history stretches back over
100 years. Its predecessor was the German
medical college established by Erich Paulun in
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modern medical education.
Tongji means working together to over-
come difficulties. In 1927, the college was
renamed Tongji University and in February
1950, it moved to Wuhan and merged with
the Wuhan University Medical College. It was
renamed Tongji Medical University in July 1985.
After merging into HUST in 2000 to become
its medical college, the college took over seven
other special and comprehensive hospitals to
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10 in 2016.
Important role
HUST was formed from a merger of Tongji
Medical University, Wuhan Urban Construction
College and Huazhong University of Technology
in 2000.
Over the past decades, HUST and its
predecessors have played important roles in
mitigating major national disasters. During
the schistosomiasis outbreak in the suburbs
of Shanghai in 1950, the prototype of today’s
Tongji Medical College called on its teachers
and students to go to the frontline to help pre-
vent and control the disease.
During the flood disaster in Wuhan in
1954, over 1,000 people from the medical
college took part in disaster relief and medical
care. When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit
Tangshan in Hebei Province in north China in
1976, 130 medical workers from Tongji rushed
to the area and treated over 15,000 injured
people in the course of a month.
In addition, 45 medical teams from Tongji
took part in relief work in the most dangerous
areas of Hubei during the 1998 Yangtze River
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In 2003, during the severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) outbreak, nearly 20 experts
from the college joined various research and
command centers and 12 medical workers
were sent to work at the Xiaotangshan Hospital,a temporary hospital in Beijing for treating SARS
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hospitals also provided services after an 8-mag-
nitude earthquake hit Wenchuan, Sichuan
Province in southwest China in 2008.
On February 8, HUST called on its alumni
around the world to help their alma mater,
Wuhan and Hubei. As of February 23, over 50
HUST alumni associations, tens of thousands
of alumni and many enterprises established
by HUST alumni had donated materials worth
over 300 million yuan ($42.8 million) to more
than 100 hospitals in Wuhan and other cities in
Hubei, and over 16 million yuan ($2.28 million)
of epidemic prevention fund to HUST.
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faculty, students and alumni have shown the
spirit of unity, Li said. HUST has always aimed to
cultivate high-caliber talent who are patriotic,
dedicated and with professional skills. This is
what a world class university should pursue. QA nurse gives an intravenous infusion to a patient at a fever outpatient department in the Union Hospital on January 21
COURTESY PHOTO