A doctor who travels through two eras

Chapter 842 What medicine is most needed right now?
It was summer, and the room was very stuffy without air conditioning or fans.

Director Zhang of Lintong County Hospital led everyone to a small river behind the hospital, where a row of large willow trees grew. They found a shady spot and sat down on the ground.

Although the summer winds are hot, it's still better than the stuffiness indoors.

Lin Sanqi opened his notebook, prepared his pen, and then said:

"Dean Zhang, as Director Sheng just said, we're all on the same side behind closed doors. I came down here today to understand the real situation and to try to solve the predicament of our country's medical and health undertakings."

As I just mentioned, I am particularly concerned about the predicament of grassroots hospitals because they deal with the largest number of people and know best what medicines patients need. So I would like to solicit your opinions.

As I mentioned earlier, a little boy almost died from a skin infection caused by a minor cut that went untreated. This story really shocked me.

Even if grassroots hospitals can't perform surgeries or establish emergency departments right now, they can still handle common and frequently occurring diseases.

Although I'm also in the health system, my entire learning and work experience has been from a high vantage point; to put it bluntly, I've become detached from the masses and don't know what the grassroots need. That's why I need to learn and ask questions even more.

Upon hearing this, Dean Zhang blushed even more, whether from embarrassment or the hot weather, it was hard to tell.

"Minister Lin (Deputy Minister of the General Logistics Department of the PLA), since you are speaking so sincerely, if I, Lao Zhang, were to conceal anything, I would be letting down the 30 people of Lintong."

Right now, our grassroots hospitals are actually lacking in everything. Take our pharmacy, for example. Today, we did urgently transfer a batch of medicines from a major hospital in Xi'an to make do. Without these medicines, our pharmacy would be almost empty.

We have some aspirin, not much, in a big glass bottle. I count it every day like it's a treasure, and so far we only have 156 pills.

There are also a few other types of tablets, such as berberine tablets and nitroglycerin. If even one tablet is missing, the accounts won't match, and I'll skin the pharmacist alive.

What's left are some traditional Chinese medicines, which are the main products manufactured by domestic pharmaceutical companies. Even among these traditional Chinese medicines, very little reaches our grassroots hospitals.

Lin Sanqi exclaimed in surprise:

"Your county hospital only has a few Western medicines like aspirin and nitroglycerin? How are you supposed to treat patients?"

Dean Zhang smiled wryly:

"Treatment mainly relies on our traditional Chinese medicine. We can still get our hands on Chinese herbs, but Western medicine is really powerless. So when Minister Lin asked us what the grassroots need, my answer was that we need everything."

Lin Sanqi nodded slightly, fully understanding the old dean's desire for medicine.

"Dean Zhang, did you study Western medicine or traditional Chinese medicine before?"

Dean Zhang proudly declared, "I graduated from Xihua Medical College, a genuine college student from before the liberation."

Lin Sanqi asked, somewhat puzzled:

"Xihua Medical College? The one in Chengdu? That's one of the top six medical colleges in the country. You should have gone to a major hospital in Xi'an, why did you come to Lintong County Hospital?"

Dean Zhang gave an awkward laugh: "My father used to be the biggest landlord in Lintong..."

Lin Sanqi understood and thought it made sense. Before liberation, how could a child from a poor family be able to go to university? They were either landlords, private business owners, or children of warlords.

Regardless of the composition, this all happened after liberation...

Lin Sanqi doesn't care about this kind of issue. It's a product of a specific historical period, and we'll set things right later. We'll take it slowly.

"Dean Zhang, since you graduated from a Western medicine medical school, that's perfect. If you were given the chance to choose your own medicines, what would you most like to have on hand?"

Without thinking, Dean Zhang blurted out:

"If I had sulfonamides or penicillin, I could save the lives of the vast majority of patients."

Lin Sanqi thought to himself that as expected, he immediately asked for antibiotics, which meant that his previous thinking was wrong.

His original plan was to focus the next project in Bao'an County on "cardiac interventional procedures," which involves implanting stents.

In the 1960s, or for a considerable period of time, humanity had no effective treatment for myocardial infarction. One reason was that myocardial infarction often occurs suddenly, leaving no time for rescue.

Secondly, most cases are not sudden myocardial infarctions, and even if the patient is taken to the hospital and a problem is found, there is no solution.

Therefore, Lin Sanqi thought that by developing stents and interventional procedures, he could completely monopolize a technology and medical device in the 1960s.

If you, a wealthy American, suffer a heart attack and I cure you so you don't die, wouldn't you feel bad if you didn't give me a few million or tens of millions of dollars?
The wealthy, who live lavishly and are often overweight, are precisely the group most susceptible to coronary heart disease, with an exceptionally high incidence rate.

Forget about stents for heart attacks; what about other heart pacemakers? And transcatheter aortic valve repair surgery?
Only Lin Sanqi, or rather Bao'an County, can provide it. In the field of cardiology, Bao'an County can firmly occupy a leading position and make huge profits through its monopoly.

The key issue is that, given the science and technology and materials science of the 1960s, it was impossible to completely replicate it.

Even though China was so powerful in 2016, it still relied on imports for the most advanced cardiac stents because if you couldn't decipher the materials science, you just couldn't manufacture them.

But this trip to Xi'an gave Lin Sanqi another insight: he should probably pay more attention to common and frequently occurring diseases.

His thinking is also constantly evolving.

At this moment, Director Sheng also sighed:

"Anti-inflammatory drugs (antibiotics) are not only urgently needed at the grassroots level, but also at all levels of hospitals. Shaanxi Province is located in the Northwest, and we are at a great disadvantage due to poor logistics and other reasons."

Before liberation, a penicillin cost several ocean dollars in Shanghai, but when it was transported to Shaanxi Province, it became just one or two small yellow croakers, and the price increased many times over.

The same thing happened after liberation. The ministry got a batch of penicillin from abroad, but only a few units were allocated to Shaanxi Province. We couldn't benefit from it at all.

Lin Sanqi burst into laughter upon hearing this:
"Indeed, I don't know about other channels. I helped the country get so much penicillin. Apart from ensuring the preferential supply for the troops, the country also supplied it to a few industrial bases."

Industrial cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, and Chongqing. Oh, and another major player is the Northeast region. That's a heavy industrial base, so their workforce will definitely need priority access.

What did Shaanxi Province have at that time? Apart from Xi'an, which was somewhat better, the rest could only be called old revolutionary base areas.

Even in the 1980s, when Sun Shaoan's wife, He Xiulian, went to Shigejie Commune to get her hair done by Hu Delu, she was almost beaten to death by her husband because they were too poor.

How much more precious penicillin does this agricultural province in the Northwest want to get?
Of course, considering the Northwest region, Shaanxi Province is considered relatively good. Border provinces like Ningxia also benefit from ethnic policies and can get some advantages.

The worst off is Gansu Province. This little-known province seemed to be ignored both in the 1960s and 2016, never getting any good opportunities and always being one of the poorest provinces in the country.

From the invention of antibiotics until the 1960s, the world mainly used two types of antibiotics: sulfonamides and penicillin.

Penicillin was only supplied to the military in small quantities in 1943, and it was not until the later stages of World War II that it was available on a large scale.

Before the invention of penicillin, the only antibiotic was sulfonamide.

Sulfonamides were first invented in Germany, but Hitler considered scientific research to be the domain of squid, which is why Germany did not equip itself with sulfonamides. It was not until after Heydrich's assassination that the importance of anti-infection was realized, and the German army began to equip itself with them.

The United States and the United States were smarter; they equipped themselves with sulfonamides from the very beginning, which was one of the key reasons for winning World War II.

Later, Alexander Fleming, an American, discovered penicillin, but he didn't know how to purify it, so he couldn't produce it.

It was Florey's team at Oxford who started the purification process from Fleming's paper and the strain, and a scientist named Chain did the purification, which led to the successful extraction of penicillin.

But this was during World War II, when the United States was bombed every day and resources were scarce, so it simply did not have the capacity for mass production.

So scientists came to the United States and, with the help of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s fermentation capabilities and the cooperation of pharmaceutical companies across the country, made penicillin available for clinical use.

This is why all the smuggled penicillin comes from the United States.

The three scientists also won the Nobel Prize for their invention of penicillin.

(End of this chapter)