A popular choice

A growing number of Chinese physicians are choosing to provide voluntary services at home and abroad, aiming to help patients in vulnerable, poorer conditions.

Ling Feng, director of Chinese Medical Volunteer, a group administered by the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, said since CMV was founded in March 2017, more than 1,200 doctors have registered, and most of them work at large tertiary hospitals.

About 300 of them are qualified to provide voluntary services, and they have assisted in fields such as diagnosis and treatment, and the training of village doctors, according to Ling.

"The number of registered volunteers will keep rising, that's certain. I hope the total number will eventually reach 300,000," she said.

Chen Zhi, a doctor in the intensive care unit at Jiangxi Provincial People's Hospital in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, began seriously considering becoming a volunteer in 2016, when he was a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago in the United States.

At the time, he was temporarily free from his busy life as an ICU doctor, and having noticed various volunteer groups on campus, such as Doctors Without Borders, he saw the opportunity to lead a different existence.

"I found that after they had worked for two or three years, many young doctors in the US chose to join volunteer groups and travel to places such as Africa to provide medical services," he said.

"It made me think about doing more to help people in dire need, rather than simply pursuing my own career."

At the start of 2017, a colleague alerted Chen that the Chinese Medical Doctor Association was recruiting volunteers. He did not hesitate to enroll.

"The group's primary task is to train medical staff in less-developed regions and improve their skills, which is exactly what I wanted to do," he said.