The Zhuhai Special Economic Zone has gone from starting with only one hospital for the entire city to providing top-notch medical treatment within a 15-minute walk of every home today.

The change started with Zhuhai becoming an SEZ in 1980. Renmin (People's) Hospital was upgraded from county to municipal status. Situated on Kangning Road in Old Xiangzhou, it served patients from the sea off Gaolan and fishing rivers of Doumen to Qi'ao and the far-flung islands.

But, it had only departments of Internal Medicine, Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics, Ophthalmology & Otorhinolaryngology, and Infectious Diseases. There were 110 ward beds and 209 staff, of whom merely five were attending physicians.

Most of the Renmin Hospital buildings in 1985 had only two or three floors, and were short on equipment. The Department of Cardiology, for example, relied on traditional medicines and basic diagnostic tools such as the auscultator and electrocardiograph. It did not have color Doppler echocardiography until the 1990s, relates Dr Zeng Zhiwei, former vice president of the hospital, who recently retired after 35 years.

Dr Zeng Zhiwei offers medical advice to a local community audience [Photo by Xu Baixi / Guanhai App]

Since 1993, the Zhuhai Municipal People's Government has built a five-story Surgery Department Building followed by a 15-story Number 1 Building at the Old Xiangzhou campus. The hospital passed evaluation by the Ministry of Health in 1995 to qualify as Grade 3 Class A.

Nonetheless, residents had to travel to Guangzhou for cardiovascular intervention surgery. Now though, with rapid development of medical technology, the hospital provides domestically leading surgeries related to coronary artery, pacemaker electrophysiology, and structural heart disease.

In 2018, the hospital opened one of the most-advanced interventional diagnosis and treatment facilities in South China. The Zhuhai Precision Medicine Diagnosis & Treatment Center contained an Artis Zeego DSA-CT operating room of the most cutting-edge design concept in the world. Many non-residents started coming to Zhuhai for surgery.

Most remarkable about Zhuhai's medical services, said Dr Zeng, were the creation of medical consortiums and institution of the Healthy China Action Plan for 2019-30. Healthy China promotes beneficial lifestyles and health at various stages of life, and aims to control major diseases.

The city started looking into medical consortiums in 2014 and last July became one of seven pilot cities for it in Guangdong Province. Such consortiums see experienced physicians from tertiary hospitals bring integrated and continuous healthcare services to localities. They connect acute, primary medical, and advanced healthcare with other human-service systems.

In Zhuhai, People's Hospital Medical Treatment Group was established in December 2019. It now has branches in Hengqin New Area, Nanshui Town of Gaolan Port, and Doumen's Fushan Industrial Park that provide local medical care and public health services for residents there.

Meanwhile, six additional Grade 3 hospitals across the city, including 5th Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University in Doumen District, and Zhuhai Hospital of Guangdong Provincial Renmin Hospital (Jinwan Central Hospital), and public grassroots medical institutions are participating in the medical consortium construction, and so are private institutions. An array of alliances has brought high-quality medical services to communities.

And, on July 29, the southern campus of the Zhuhai Women's & Children's Hospital opened with 800 patient beds, advanced medical services, and convenient transport operation in Guangsheng Village of Nanping Town. Nearby, the new Zhuhai Center for Chronic Disease Control (Zhuhai 3rd Renmin Hospital) will open next summer.