A lifelong guardian of children's breath
At seven one morning, 92-year-old Chen Yuzhi was sitting at the breakfast table, eating while answering asthma-related messages on her phone.
As a former chief physician in the department of allergy at Capital Center for Children's Health, Capital Medical University, she has devoted her life to preventing and treating childhood asthma.
Her phone contains the contact information for over 100 primary care doctors, and she remembers exactly which types of cases each one has struggled with.
WeChat, online meetings, app-based patient records, even AI software — she has tried to keep up with every tool young people use.
In the 1980s, Chen went to Australia as a visiting scholar to study the standard asthma treatments then used internationally.
After returning home, she found that many hospitals were prescribing steroids and antibiotics indiscriminately for childhood asthma. Children suffered repeated attacks, and parents were at a loss.
