A pair of 25-year-old twins from Yunnan have successfully received the first round of their female-to-male gender reassignment surgery at Shanghai's No. 411 Hospital of People's Liberation Army. They are now seeking to be the first twins in the country to officially change their gender. more ›

Ouch. A boy was rushed from Jiaxing in neighbouring Zhejiang province to Shanghai Children's Hospital with a pair of scissors lodged in the side of his head. Surgeons at the hospital successfully removed the scissors in a four-hour operation Sunday evening and the boy is now in stable condition. Shanghai Daily with the details: more ›

In news guaranteed to make our male readers cross their legs and wince, doctors at Changhai Hospital are trying to find a way to remove a 3cm-long needle from the urethra of a 14-year-old boy. more ›

How do you damage the reputation of one of the nation's top universities and its affiliates? Why, by letting stupid interns change the name of your institution's cancer patients to make fun of their terminal illness, of course! The family of a patient at Fudan University's Cancer Center is furious with the institution after receiving a hospital bill that refers to their loved one as "drop dead Zhang." more ›

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More horrible news from Foshan's Nanhai district, the exact same area where the double hit-and-run of two-year-old toddler Yueyue made international news last month. Nurses at the city's Nanhai District Red Cross Hospital dumped a newly-born infant in a plastic bag in the toilet, thinking it was dead when it was actually still alive. more ›

A new study in the medical journal The Lancet claims that China's infant mortality ratehas been halved, due to campaigns encouraging women to give birth inside hospitals, rather than at home. Researchers from Peking University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine discovered that the mortality rate for babies born in hospitals fell by 62 percent from 1996 to 2008. Children were also found to be two to three times more likely to survive their first month than those born without the aid of professional medical care. The study used data compiled in the Maternal and Mortality Surveillance System, to analyze 1.5 million births that took place from 1996 to 2008. So everybody's happy at the good news, right? Well, besides the population doomsday proponents, who are probably getting antsy in their chair. They shouldn't blame the kids though, since China's population problem has little to do with them. more ›

Make sure to buy your air conditioner a beer for saving your life: "Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention said today that local hospitals have received 47 heatstroke patients this summer and two of them died. Shanghai introduced a heatstroke reporting system this year, requiring hospitals to give an immediate report after receiving patients with heatstroke. There was no heatstroke data before. A 31-year-old schoolmaster who came to Shanghai for training died on June 23 when the temperature reached 35 degrees Celsius. A 41-year-old migrant worker at a local construction site died last Thursday when the mercury hit 37 degrees." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

"A LOCAL hospital yesterday was told to compensate a man who was given a glass of wine a day as part of treatment for his alcohol-damaged liver. The patient, Le Changjiu, claimed the daily 200-milliliter ration of rice wine - a Chinese alcoholic drink brewed from rice - worsened his cirrhosis of the liver. The hospital, which was not named, was ordered by Jing'an District People's Court to compensate Le almost 100,000 yuan (US$15,450). Le, in his late 40s, was hospitalized on July 28, 2008, and diagnosed with alcoholic hepatitis and alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Wine was included in the treatment to wean Le off alcohol. Le's liver deteriorated further. The court ruled the hospital was partly responsible." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Athletes: what would they be without a little wanton drunkenness every now and then? Reports have emerged that members of China's speed-skating team had an altercation with local police Monday night on the streets of Lijiang in Yunnan province. more ›

Local authorities announced a crack down today on what they term "underground ambulances," or black ambulances, who profit from the illegal long-distance transport of patients in and out of Shanghai. Often shoddily outfitted and misleading to customers, black ambulances pose a serious risk to patients who are ignorant of options and desperate to get home. more ›

Dai Longquan, a 19-year-old man from Jiangxi Province is currently recuperating at Renji Hospital after having a 28cm drill bit removed from his brain by surgeons. He was adjusting the drill when a tiny little accident happened — the bit shot into his right eye socket and was embedded 18 centimetres into his brain. By the time Dai was rushed to the hospital, he was already in a critical condition and was lapsing into a coma. Doctors made two small openings on each side of his brain and not only removed the bit (three centimetres of which had been bent into a right angle), but also saved his eye. more ›

Too much of a good thing, as they say, is bad. China is supposed to have the world's highest rate of antibiotics abuse and the problem, apart from killing an estimated 80,000 a year, is leading to an increased resistance of bacteria to drugs, resulting in a rising number of recessive syphilis cases, among others. An ambitious two-year project has now been launched to train over 30,000 medical staff across China in the responsible use of antibiotics. more ›

By Jellymon more ›

A little girl from Hunan province born with her heart outside of the body and rib cage has come to Shanghai for medical treatment. The congenital defect, known as ectopia cordis, is extremely rare. In China, only two cases have been recorded and worldwide, over 200. The girl's heart is protected by only a layer of skin and nothing else, and we imagine that sleeping in any other position than on her back would be life-threatening for her. The girl has just received treatment in Shanghai, and the surgery has been said to be successful. Unfortunately (and as usual), no other details were given. more ›