We have contacted Snayongzong, a resident in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, who also have been worked in local CDC before retirement. According to her, the main health problem for local residents is that the knowledge and the awareness for people there are not catching up, their health awareness is still at a relatively low level, the publicity should be strengthen. In Diqing, for infectious disease, other than resident factors, problems like the relatively low diagnosis skills and relatively poor medical condition can not be ignored as well.
We asked if things will be better if we can achieve the early diagnosis for diseases, and the answer is positive. Then we have asked that which aspect in local residents’ medical condition need to be improved the most, she said that for poor areas of hypoxia on the plateau, high-technicians and medical technicians can not be recruited, there are lack of qualified personnel and equipment for people living there. If the problem of the lacking for doctors and facilities can be fixed, or convenient diagnosing and treating method can be achieved, their problem will be solved. We have also asked about whether extracting the blood from patients and surgical treatment are acceptable for Tibetan residents, she said that for the older generation, they may have some hesitation or consideration, but for most residents and younger generation, it is acceptable and the acceptance is raising.
Therefore, we are sure that our project is useful for local residents.
As Snayongzong and parasitology professors mentioned above, health education and health publicity need to be enhanced for local residents. We wanted to do more, to go to the plateau and the prairie to spread the knowledge. Therefore, we have reached out to Prof. Wenjie Gong from School of Public health, Central South University.
The first question we asked is that due to the distinguishing living feature of herdsmen, their living location is unsteady, how can we make sure the health education can cover as many herdsmen as we can. She said that we can go for a middleman, who has connection with local residents and us. To reach out to the middleman, we can directly go there and ask.Then we asked about how to conduct health education for people who have different culture background and different opinions upon disease. She told us that the most important thing is that we can not deny their opinion or their culture. We can make suggestions according to their living habits. People do not want to get “scared”, we should put ourselves in their shoes, feel what they feel, tell them what this disease may bring them and what damage it may cause. For new medical techniques, what we should do is to immediately, correctly and directly state their advantages, use a straightforward way to present that new techniques, new methods are trust-worthy. Also, to let people know about what these techniques can benefit their life, the first thing is to know about their daily life, then integrate the technology into their life.
Due to the pandemic prevention policy, we couldn’t make it to Tibet, but we will try to achieve the health publicity and health education in other way or go to the scene in the future.
We have also reached out to Zhifang Han, who currently working in Tibet CDC and mainly in charge of the control of echinococcosis. We wanted to know the current situation for local residents and how can we improve our project from a government staff’s point of view. According to her, the infestation rate in Tibet is relatively high, over 74 counties in Tibet are being bothered by epidemic of echinococcosis. The chairman of the people's government of the autonomous region set up a headquarters and office to organize a four-year comprehensive prevention and control of echinococcosis. First, it was screened for all over the whole region within a year, the screened patients were arranged in designated beds in designated hospitals for surgical treatment, which highly reduced the prevalence rate. However, there are still difficulties for these methods.
The main difficulties are: Tibet is vast and sparsely populated, and it is difficult to prevent and control. Second, there is a shortage of rural medical personnel and prevention and control personnel, and there are many prevention and control tasks, which has a great impact on the monitoring and follow-up of echinococcosis among farmers and herdsmen living in remote areas. Third, due to the high mobility of farmers and herdsmen's living, there are still insufficient safety measures for safe drinking water in agricultural and pastoral areas. Fourth, it will take a long process and time for the farmers and herdsmen to completely change their own hygiene habits. Therefore, a convenient and a cheap test is in a great need to deal with the problem of echinococcosis.
