China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Village doctor’s work on lake and land leaves lasting mark
Honghu woman has spent decades delivering babies in Hubei’s Chuantouzui
When Xie Ai’e was recruited to be a doctor at a clinic in Chuantouzui village in Honghu city, Hubei province, in 1992, she didn’t expect it to be a 10-square-meter cabin floating on a lake, nor did she think of spending all her youthful days there.
At the time, the village — basically a cluster of boats — was located at center of the 466-square-kilometer Honghu Lake.
The lake is a major source of income for the 600 or so villagers. For decades, locals lived on the water, fishing and planting lotus.
“What every family feared was getting sick,” said former fisherman Liu Boling, 66, adding that it took at least three hours by boat to reach the nearest hospital on the bank.
Since there was no doctor at the village, locals often endured pain until it subsided, said Liu Juncheng, former Party secretary of the village.
Xie, then 22, had recently gotten married. She and her husband, He Taiyu, worked at different clinics in the city and could meet each other only every three to five days. After learning Chuantouzui was recruiting doctors, the couple applied for the positions and were hired.
“They wanted a female doctor who could help when babies needed to be delivered, because sometimes women would give birth at midnight,” she said. That year, in fact, a villager had died during childbirth while being transferred to hospital.
The environment was even harsher than they imagined. Under the wooden deck of the floating clinic was the 10-square-meter cramped space for them to work and live. The only furniture was a bed. Below that was the lake itself.
During rainstorms in the summer, the boat shook violently, often enough to “make us vomit”, Xie recalled. In winter, the cabin was like an ice cellar. Having no electricity, they used a kerosene lamp at night.
The most common foods were fish and pickles, since it was inconvenient to buy fresh food on the bank.
“At first, I could not sleep because the sound of the waves was so loud,” Xie said, but she got used to it after about six months.
The couple received about 20 patients a day, treating ailments such as scratches, sore throats, colds and headaches.
At peak time, more than 20 babies were delivered with Xie’s help in a year. Almost all of the villagers under age 20 were born with her help.
Xie remembers the first child she helped deliver.
“It was Aug 27, 1992. The mother had endured labor pains for a long time. I accompanied her from day to night, talking to her continuously and comforting her. When the 4-kilogram boy was born, her family members set off firecrackers to celebrate.”
Before she came, children were delivered in an old-fashioned way by older female villagers without proper disinfection methods.
“The mother was less scared after knowing I was giving her more professional medical treatment,” Xie said.
During her 25 years working on the lake, Xie received more than 30,000 patients at the clinic, paid visits to more than 3,000 patients at their homes and transferred more than 100 pregnant women to hospitals to give birth. She said she thinks she has traveled some 80,000 kilometers on the water during that time — about twice the length of Earth’s equator.
Xie recalled walking 5 km one winter on the lake, which had frozen, to treat a pregnant woman who had fever. Another time, a villager burned his house boat by accident, and Xie invited him to live in the clinic.
“One year, a drought hindered the transportation of villagers. Learning a liver cancer patient was in urgent need of drugs, Doctor Xie walked several hours in deep mud to get to his home,” said Liu, the village official.
“Villagers felt more secured with Doctor Xie to help them.”
Xie, 51, has been honored as one China’s “most beautiful village doctors” and as a National Model Worker because of her contributions to rural medical health. She was also a deputy to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
In the 1990s, childbirth cost 20 yuan and the consultation fee was 1 yuan at her clinic.
“Though there was not much income, it was good to work among fishermen. They would bring us dried fish and invite us for dinner during festivals,” Xie recalled.
In 2016, the city initiated a program to ban fishing in Honghu Lake to restore its ecology. Encouraged to live and work on shore, 2,640 fisherman from 930 families left the lake.
With the support of the local government, Xie opened a clinic near the villagers’ new community. Besides seeing patients, she also helps fishermen learn new skills and find jobs.
“Doctor Xie would be there every time we need her,” said villager Li Zhenhao, 66.
Li was diagnosed with schistosomiasis last year, a disease caused by parasitic worms, and is getting treatment from Xie. He said she helped deliver all his children.
“For all these years, we have gotten along like a family. She is the guardian angel of us fishermen,” he said.