A wheelchair-bound 86-year-old doctor is being hailed a hero for coming out of retirement to help treat patients in the Wuhan outbreak.
Despite having problems with standing up and walking, Professor Dong came back to Wuhan Children’s Hospital where he served as pediatrician for many decades. He knew how the doctors are having a difficult time with so many people affected by the outbreak; thus, this kind doctor decided to help.
Photo credit: Oriental Daily
As the source of the outbreak, there are so many patients in Wuhan. The situation is bad at the children’s hospital. In fact, there were so many patients that the hospitals are running out of beds for the patients and the medical staff are overworked. Knowing that the hospital could really make use of extra hands, the good doctor offered his services.
Making rounds on a wheelchair, Professor Dong is simply happy to serve. Aside from doing rounds, he also offers consultation for walk-in patients.
At his age, he is more prone to getting infected by the virus, particularly because he is in direct contact with thee patients. But Professor Dong is not afraid of anything. After all, he has lived many decades in his life and would readily sacrifice everything to help out people in need.
While he has been seeing patients from time to time despite being retired, the outbreak brought him so many patients that he tended to as many as 30 people a day as Wuhan shut down last Thursday, January 23.
For Professor Dong, treating patients of the outbreak is “just another job”. He will do everything he could to lend a helping hand even as everyone hopes the outbreak will be solved soon.
What is an Outbreak?
An outbreak is a term in epidemiology that signifies a sudden increase in occurrences of a particular disease. This could mean a localized outbreak wherein members of a local community are affected by the outbreak but it could also start with that local community but becomes a global concern as is spreads across the world.