Award-winning medical talent to work in city

Nobel Prize laureate Barry Marshall will soon be providing outpatient treatment and sharing his medical expertise in digestive diseases with peers in Shanghai.

Marshall is currently the professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Western Australia. He and Robin Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005 for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (h. pylori) and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.

Marshall was recently appointed as professor at Tongji University where a laboratory focused on Helicobacter pylori will soon be set up. The university said that the Australian will be working on the campus for at least three months each year. He will also be carrying out interdisciplinary research projects with the university’s other departments for medicine, life science, pharmacy, chemistry and material science.

Marshall has also signed a contract with Shanghai East Hospital, which is affiliated to the university, to jointly establish an international treatment center that specializes in digestive diseases. Such a facility will act as a platform for providing new technology, treatment methods and drugs in the field and can also offer a channel for patients to receive international medical services, the university said.

According to the World Health Organization, Helicobacter pylori is the first etiological factor in gastric ulcer, gastritis, and gastric cancer. An epidemiological survey showed that more than 50 percent of people in China are infected with Helicobacter pylori. However, the clinical eradication rate of the bacterium is lower than 65 percent.

As the city’s public medical institutions have been constantly exploring international development and the gradual loosening of policies regarding the recruitment of foreign medical talent, more foreign doctors are expected to work in local hospitals in the coming years.

Earlier this year, Renji South Hospital, one of top institutions in the city, announced its recruitment of a US doctor who specializes in neurosurgery and spine surgery.