By Liu Zhihua
Updated: 2014-07-19 09:07:42
Hong Kong orthopedics surgeon Leung Ping-chung visits Fuping county, Shaanxi province, for his charity program. Yuan Jingzhi / For China Daily
Leung Ping-chung, 73, an eminent orthopedics surgeon, and emeritus professor with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, raises funds to help people from China's underdeveloped rural areas to meet their medical requirements.
In 1993, when Leung was already a successful orthopedic surgeon, he initiated a charity program for poor patients in remote parts of the Chinese mainland. During the past few decades, Leung witnessed many patients suffer due to lack of treatment.
According to him, most doctors are in the profession to heal people, but the reason he chose to especially assist rural people on the mainland is because such places had limited access to quality medical care compared to urban centers.
"The healthcare system in rural areas lagged far behind cities. Most doctors and nurses are poorly trained, and hospitals and clinics badly equipped," Leung says.
His charity program, Operation Concern, comprises a team of orthopedic surgeons, nurses, rehabilitation technicians and physiotherapists from Hong Kong, all of whom volunteer to offer free services to people with orthopedic problems in the mainland's poorer areas.
Their services include surgeries, nursing and physical training. They also provide rehabilitation tools. The first service center that Leung's team established was in Sichuan province's Dayi county in 1993.
Over the years, the team has visited many villages to provide free healthcare, he says.
Operation Concern also provides doctors and nurses with on-site training at local hospitals where camps are held, while patients can avail of surgeries and inpatient treatment. The program gives hospitals about 3,000 yuan ($484) for the use of its facilities and personnel for every inpatient covered by his program.
Leung says he clearly remembers certain common scenes from the 1990s in rural China. Thousands of patients with different health issues would gather at a designated site for free treatment the moment they learned of his team's arrival at a particular place.
To date, more than 300 medical professionals from Hong Kong have volunteered for his nonprofit initiative and have performed some 5,000 surgeries, and helped about 20,000 patients with other medical care.
At its peak in the 1990s, the program partnered with hospitals in remote locations across 10 provinces, including Shaanxi, Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.
However, now there are only five such cooperation centers left. Key reasons for the decline in such partnerships are the central government's policies on enhancing healthcare in the countryside and promoting economic development in backward areas, Leung adds.
But there are some local hospitals that have "broken" partnership agreements with Leung's team in pursuit of profit, he says. "A hospital can get thousands of yuan from an orthopedic patient, if the patient is treated by its own staff."
Since 2002, Leung has worked on newer ways to help rural patients.
In 2006, he launched a medical insurance program in Fuping county in Shaanxi province after his team raised funds in Hong Kong to buy medical insurance for locals who cannot afford it.
What's more, for families with very little income, the program also grants subsidized inpatient treatment, Leung says.
"It needs joint effort from society and the government to make life easier for the underprivileged people, and Leung has been working on this for more than 20 years," Jennie Mak Ling, a Hong Kong resident who has known Leung for decades, says.
"Even if the money he raises cannot help all the people who deserve such help, at least he tries, and has helped some."