Remembering legendary Bethune

Inspiration to many

Bethune's pioneering role and enterprising spirit in the medical profession continue to win him constant recognition from today's medical workers and scholars from many countries though 85 years have passed since he left this world.

He was hailed as having "made significant contributions to thoracic surgery and medical instrumentation", besides designing many surgical instruments that have been further refined and being used in modern medicine, such as periosteal scrapers and table-mounted scapula retractors.

Bethune was "an innovator in the field of medicine, and an altruist whose impact extended far beyond his home country", wrote Krystal Rampersad and Michael Montalbano with St George's University School of Medicine in Grenada, in an article published last year.

"Throughout his career, Bethune's devotion to self-improvement was notable. He was renowned for his self-critical approach," they said.

Zhang Shunhua, a senior ophthalmologist at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, is one of the Chinese ophthalmologists who have been greatly inspired by Bethune.

She has been a member of Chinese volunteer medical teams sent to Asian and African countries six times, in Ethiopia in 2014, Mauretania (2015), Sri Lanka (2016), Laos (2017) and Namibia in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

"My work is a continuation of Bethune's spirit," she said.

"We have helped some underprivileged countries in Africa and South Asia as we were there to perform cataract surgeries, so that more of the poverty-stricken cataract patients could get their sight back."

She noted that blinding eye diseases are a very serious social problem in countries that are relatively economically challenged.

"Fortunately, through current medical technology, patients with cataracts have the opportunity to regain their sight, regain the ability to take care of themselves, and even do what they can do," she said.

In some countries in Africa and South Asia, ophthalmologists are in short supply, so Zhang and her colleagues came to lend a hand.

"We had a team to do this, and the team included at least five doctors, three nurses and maybe some technicians, because we had to carry around a lot of medical equipment."

She and her colleagues usually spend 20 days in a stay, during which they had to carry out three to four hundred cataract surgeries.

"In these places, the facilities for ophthalmology were limited, and all of our work, including the pre-surgical examinations and some of the ward management, is done by our staff, so each of us is a multi-talented multitasker."

In many countries, these Chinese doctors were also faced with the problem of language barriers. She showed a form in English that was provided to patients before surgery, asking detailed questions about their sickness and illness.

"We also spent a lot of time and energy creating many forms of this kind in order to make sure that each patient receives a high level of treatment and that no mistakes are made."

According to photos provided by Zhang, there was great excitement among the Namibian patients who were singing and dancing the day their gauze was opened, and there was great joy inside the whole ward.

"We have seen patients in different countries giving us lots of recognition after surgery, and we also felt happy from the bottom of our hearts," she said.