Retired Beijing doctor still treats Jiaxian residents

Inspired by the legendary predecessor, she offers services, expertise free of charge

In Jiaxian county in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, Lu Shengmei is a well-known figure.

The 77-year-old is a special person. She is a Beijing native who has worked in the impoverished and backward county for more than 50 years, a doctor who has helped tens of thousands of people, and one of the winners of the "China's 10 Most Respectable Doctors in 2021" award, which was presented by the National Health Commission in August.

Lu's connection with the northwestern county began in 1968, when as a graduate from a medical college in Beijing, she was assigned to work in Jiaxian as a doctor.

Sitting on the border of the Loess Plateau and the Mu Us Desert, Jiaxian was then extremely impoverished, burdened with a poor environment and terrible medical conditions.

"My major in college was pediatrics, but at the time, people in Jiaxian had no notion of specialties. All they knew was that I was 'a doctor from Beijing', which meant they believed I could advise on any disease," Lu said.

Seeing that people were short of medical resources, doctors and medication, the then 24-year-old decided to remain for what she described as a "long period of time" to help improve things.

Lu used her spare time to teach herself other specialties like acupuncture, internal medicine, dermatology, gynecology and obstetrics so that she could work as a general practitioner, not just a pediatrician, and be able to help more people.

What she probably didn't expect was that this "long period" would become more than half a century.

Over the years, Lu had many opportunities to relocate to better places and higher-paid positions, but she always chose to stay.

She has provided medical services to tens of thousands of patients, some of whom are from other provinces, and she also set up the first formal pediatrics department in the county. What's more, she continues to serve the people today, even after retirement.

When Lu stepped down as deputy director of Jiaxian People's Hospital in 1999, her relatives in Beijing invited her to return to the capital. She also received invitations from renowned domestic hospitals, with promises of yearly salaries in excess of 200,000 yuan.

Lu turned them all down and remained in her 20-square-meter residence at the center of the county town, providing medical services to visitors.

She never charges patients or sells a single pill to earn money, and most of the drugs she prescribes can be bought at local pharmacies. "I have a pension from the government. That is enough. I don't need to make more money," she said.

Ren Jinfang, whose daughter and granddaughter were former patients of the doctor, said: "Doctor Lu has excellent medical skills, and the drugs she prescribes are cheap and accessible. We all feel safe and relieved after consulting her."

The only outside invitation Lu ever accepted was from her former employer, the Jiaxian People's Hospital, which keeps an office for her to offer free medical services on Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week.

After she retired, the doctor's children tried to persuade her to stop working so hard.

They hoped their mother would enjoy a relaxing retirement. But she didn't listen.

"I have always been inspired by my teacher, Professor Zhang Jinzhe (a renowned pediatrician and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences), who was still serving the people when he was 99," Lu said.

Wu Yan, director of the Jiaxian hospital's pediatrics department, said that even now, Lu feels obliged to lend a hand whenever her former employer has an emergency or encounters a complex case.

"Several years ago, a child with severe viral myocarditis was sent to the emergency ward. The child was in a critical condition that we all felt incapable of handling. So we called Doctor Lu and she arrived within minutes," Wu said.

"From 8 am to 9 pm, she worked to save the child. She didn't eat, and remained in the hospital until the child was out of danger."

Since retiring, Lu has provided medical services to more than 50,000 people.

But she is not content with what she had done and hopes to do more.

During the COVID-19 epidemic in January last year, although Jiaxian was not affected, Lu wrote a letter to the heads of the hospital, asking to be sent to work on the front lines, where there was an acute need for doctors. "If the hospital organizes a rescue team, please count me in," she wrote in the letter.

"I'd like to go wherever I am needed ... This is my mission and responsibility because I'm a doctor."