This is the most capable comprehensive hospital in Jiangxi Province. The facility has 3,200 beds, 29 personnel who receive special allowances from the State Council, 274 chief surgeons, and 159 PhDs.752
As early as in 1991, the hospital became the first in the province to perform kidney transplants, followed by heart, liver, combined liver-kidney, combined pancreas-kidney, bone marrow, and corneal transplants. “To develop its transplant business, our hospital made a comprehensive effort in investing in human and material resources. It set up the first organ transplant center in the province. This is the only hospital in Jiangxi Province with an independent organ transplant center. Our organ transplant center is the best and most completely equipped in the province.”753
The hospital employs a large number of high-profile experts of different ages from within the province and the country for technical support. It plans to send full-time transplant-related personnel for different types of training. It also hired a transplant-center director who has 16 years of clinical and research experience in transplantation and a PhD from overseas.
The hospital’s transplantation activities have also received support from government leaders. For example, Meng Jianzhu, former Jiangxi Provincial Party Secretary and current Party Secretary of the CCP Central Political and Legal Affairs Committee, has historically supported this hospital’s transplantation activity. He personally played a matchmaking role in establishing a collaborative relationship between this hospital and the Shangha Organ Transplant Center (Shanghai General Hospital).
Within the first 4 months since its official opening, the center acquired the capability to perform 6 vital-organ transplants in one day.
The center has 31 transplant beds and 22 specialists, all of whom hold either PhDs or master’s degrees in transplantation or related fields. Two of them are chief surgeons and professors.
Professor Yan Yehong, director of the organ transplant department, received training in living-donor liver transplantation at Kyoto University of Japan. He received his PhD and clinical training in abdominal organ transplantation at the University of Leuven in Belgium. Upon his return to China, he started the clinical kidney transplant program in Hainan Provincial People’s Hospital, which has become a routine operation at the hospital. He later established the organ transplantation department at First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, where kidney transplants are now a routine operation. He has directed several research programs in transplantation and published a number of articles in core transplant journals in China and abroad. He also contributed his writing to a few core transplant books in the country.754 The interviews (from before March 2006, when the organ harvesting crimes were exposed internationally) regarding transplantation with Yan Yehong on the government news website jxnews.com.cn have since been deleted.
Professor Peng Guizu, deputy director of the organ transplant department, received training in liver transplantation from various hospitals in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing. He has independently completed a large number of liver transplants. Chief physician Xiao Jiansheng obtained his PhD in transplantation from the Institute of Organ Transplantation at Tongji Medical University. Chief physician Li Jianfeng received his master’s degree from the Organ Transplantation Center of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and is also specialized in transplantation.755