Helping those in Need: From Prevention to Cure, Teach People How to Fish, Not Just Give Them Fish.
Recently, United Family Healthcare (UFH) teamed up with the Han Hong Love Charity Foundation to launch a 15-day Hundred Helpers for Shaanxi charity event.
Over the past several years, our Hundred Helpers events have been held in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Guizhou, Gansu, and Ningxia. This year’s event in Shaanxi is the eighth.
During the Hundred Helpers for Shaanxi event, the UFH team provided cervical cancer screenings for women, in addition to regular diagnostic testing and treatment. Cervical cancer is a major threat to women’s health, the incidence of which has been rising in recent years. Screening is absolutely necessary for early detection and intervention.
In economically underdeveloped areas, participation in regular cervical cancer screening is insufficient, and related work is progressing slowly. Only by early detection, early prevention, and early treatment can the incidence of cervical cancer be effectively reduced and the problem of poverty or returning to poverty due to medical expenses solved. In the past two years, UFH has actively engaged in charity projects related to cervical cancer and breast cancer in an effort to reduce poverty by preventing these diseases.
Dr. Wang Jue is from the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department in Shanghai United Family Pudong Hospital. She used to be a member of a Chinese medical assistance team in Pakistan. This was her first time to offer volunteer medical services in Shaanxi, where she met cervical cancer patients every day. What worries her is that local women lack knowledge about how to prevent cervical cancer. Without the habit of going to the hospital for routine screenings or physical examinations, they go to small clinics when feeling ill, where they are diagnosed with “cervicitis” and given some useless treatment. As a consequence, they miss the optimal time window for effective treatment. Local doctors are somewhat slow in updating their knowledge, and their treatment techniques are backward in some cases.
Dr. Wang Jue says, “Local doctors work with us enthusiastically in offering free screening services, which is also an opportunity to train local medical professionals. At the same time, we also stress the concept of patient education with local doctors and teach them to be more accurate in educating patients.”
During the 15 days in Shaanxi, the UFH team screened hundreds of women for cervical cancer every day. The Hundred Helpers for Shaanxi event utilized a one-stop HPV screening and treatment model, which greatly shortened the time required by traditional screening and treatment, bringing obvious convenience and health benefits to the local people.
Ms. Roberta Lipson, Founder and CEO of UFH, also joined the Hundred Helpers for Shaanxi team, helping medical staff to prepare for medical treatment on a daily basis, and explaining the screening process to local people in her fluent Mandarin. She said that cervical cancer screening is an important preventive measure for women’s health, especially in rural areas. “We hope that initiatives such as these will urge more women to pay attention to their health and be screened,” Ms. Lipson said.
