This morning, the National Commendation Conference for Poverty Alleviation was held in Beijing, marking the overall victory of China’s poverty alleviation program. China’s poverty alleviation has created a miracle in the history of human poverty alleviation. We are honored to have participate in and contributed to the program. I am pleased to see that Fosun has been selected as an advanced group as this represents the country’s acknowledgment of Fosun and reminds me of our huge responsibilities.

“Self-improvement, Teamwork, Performance, Contribution to Society” is the value set by Fosun when it started its business. Relying on Fosun’s professional capability in the field of health, under the guidance of the Poverty Alleviation Office of the National Health Commission, we, together with the China Population Welfare Foundation and the Foundation of China Society for Promotion of the Guangcai Program, jointly launched the “Health and Warm Heart - Rural Doctors’ Health Poverty Alleviation” program at the end of 2017. To solve the problem of poor people in China, the first thing to do is to solve their medical issues. Only by improving the rural medical system can we really solve the issue of “poverty caused from illness” and eliminate poverty in rural areas. I am a child from a rural area. Many of us received help from rural doctors when we were young, so we know that it is not easy for rural doctors.

I am deeply touched by many scenes of my participation in the “Rural Doctors” program in the past. I still remember that in June 2018, I drove for three hours from Yan’an to Qingjian County and Zizhou County in Yulin. Together with the resident members in the team of the rural doctors’ health and poverty alleviation program, I visited the local town clinics and village clinics.  At that time, after chatting with Dr. Zheng Zhuqian in Zheng Jia Jian Village, I felt that we must cultivate more rural doctors in the young generation. At that time, Dr. Zheng was 65 years old and had just received a minor operation at the beginning of the year, but he returned to work after resting for 15 days. In the future, we need to use more modern technologies to help rural clinics connect with hospitals in counties, cities, provinces, Beijing and Shanghai to improve the training of doctors.

Another rural doctor who gave me a deep impression is the “Lighter Doctor” Li Yuzhong. I interviewed him last year at the “Ceremony for Top 10 Warm-Hearted Rural Doctors and Township Hospital Directors in Health China 2020” in Qingdao. Dr. Li has been a doctor for 13 years, and his mobile phone has never been powered off during this time. He gave the elderly people in the village his phone number, but as they often put the paper with his phone number on it in their pockets, it was very easy for them to lose the paper. So, he ordered cigarette lighters with his name and phone number printed on them. When the elderly people came to visit him, he would give them a lighter. Since then, everyone in the area knew Li Yuzhong as the “lighter doctor”.

Nowadays, volunteers participate in the on-site work of “rural doctors”. Every year, we will select outstanding employees from our Fosun member enterprises and outstanding college students from the volunteers of China’s Far West Program of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, and send them to the counties participating in the program as full-time volunteers to work on-site for one year. Within the enterprise, Fosun’s global partners are fully mobilized, each doing their part to help out under the “one person, one county” paired aid that was launched to alleviate poverty. We protect rural doctors, and rural doctors protect people. In the future, Fosun will continue to work hard for “rural doctors.” We also welcome more people to join the team of protectors for rural doctors. Let us all do our best!

THE ENG