Hometown heroine

Xiaozhai village, Longji town, Longsheng autonomous county in Guilin, South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, is located at the foot of Fupingbao Mountain, which is more than 1,900 meters above sea level.

Hongyao is one of the branches of the Yao ethnicity, and they take this name out of their habit of dressing in red (pronounced hong in Chinese). Pan Jiping, 57, works as the village doctor and her chief responsibility is to protect the health of more than 1,200 villagers.

In 1988, Pan Jiping went to the county health school to study medicine in order to change the situation as it was extremely difficult for the villagers to find medical treatment, and minor illnesses often got delayed and developed into serious condition.

In 1990, after completing her studies, Pan returned to Xiaozhai village to work as a village doctor, and she has been sticking to that post for more than 30 years.

As the first doctor in the village to have received formal training, Pan would come to the door as soon as any villager needs help in any windy or rainy days, and from since she started to win the trust and praise from the locals.

Nowadays, with the improvement of traffic conditions and living standards, more and more villagers have begun to seek medical treatment in the county center, and Pan has thus signed up as a family doctor in the village. Besides daily basic diagnosis and treatment, she pays regular visits to families, to check up on them especially the elderly in the village. Follow-up visits for patients of chronic diseases and health records compilation are her focus too.

Pan says she will keep doing it and protect their health as long as everyone still needs her.