Special women receive recognition

Pan Mei'er has been taking care of leprosy patients for the past 13 years and her extraordinary devotion has earned her an award for being one of the country's top 10 career women role models.

In 1997, the graduate from Huzhou Health School was appointed a nurse in the leprosy section of the Institute of Prevention and Treatment of Skin Disease, in Deqing county, a mountainous area of Zhejiang province.

The 34-year-old, from Zhejiang, admitted she was at first appalled by the deformities of the disease, but once she decided to make it her life work, she has helped many thousands of sufferers.