Hospital upgrades building to focus on infectious diseases in children

As part of the main forces in Shanghai's emergency network to fight infectious diseases among children, a building dedicated to receiving minors who are patients of infectious diseases and conducting immunization research was put into operation on Friday at the Children's Hospital of Fudan University, a Shanghai-based national medical center for children.

The hospital has been the only medical institution in the city designated to receive cases involving minors plagued with infectious diseases during the outbreak of multiple epidemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few years.

The facelift of the building, which used to be a building designated to receive infectious disease patients at the hospital, was aimed to play its due role in both daily case treatment and responding to possible epidemic outbreak in the future, according to the hospital.

Compared with its original structure, the building has upgraded its layout of contaminated areas, semi- contaminated areas and clean areas, and has added negative pressure wards and operation rooms as well as single intensive care units to increase risk control capacity.

"In additional to conventional imaging equipment, MRI equipment has also been added within the building so that critically ill cases or those with complex diseases can be treated with the support of the entire chain without the need to leave the building," said Zeng Mei, deputy director of the department of infectious diseases at the hospital.

Wang Yi, president of the hospital, said that the upgrade of the building provides a more advanced and complete platform for the development of the disciplines, and may serve as a beginning to improve clinical diagnosis and treatment, technological innovations, and scientific research of relevant diseases and promote research result transformation.