Uganda receives health-aid from a new Chinese medical team

Extra medical personnel from China have been sent to Uganda to help the African country tackle numerous diseases and improve its public health system. From three hospitals and a university in Yunnan Province, southwest China, seven medical personnel, a translator, and a cook were chosen. On Thursday, Kunming was their final destination.

"We will do our best to alleviate people's sorrow by upholding the spirit of hard work and perseverance," Guo Zhiping, team leader from Yunnan's No.3 People's Hospital, said during the send-off ceremony on Wednesday.

Guo stated that, in addition to telemedicine and public health, the two parties will collaborate in other areas such as hospital administration and discipline development. Traditional Chinese medicine therapies such as acupuncture and moxibustion are used by doctors who specialize in anything from gastrointestinal to anesthesiology to otolaryngology to thyroid and breast surgery.

Because they will be assisting the government in the fight against COVID-19 for the next 15 months, the team received four months of training in PCR collection and testing.

Yunnan has deployed twenty-one medical teams there since 1983. Guo hopes that their work in Uganda will add to the strong mutual fondness between China and Uganda on the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations.

China's medical aid operation in Africa began in Algeria in 1963 when a Chinese medical team was dispatched. In November 2011, the Chinese government issued a white paper on China-Africa collaboration, stating that 23,000 medical personnel had been sent to the continent and had treated approximately 230 million people.