Clinicians from Birmingham Heartlands Hospital’s HIV Service and their counterparts from the Sixth Hospital in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province China, are to take part in the first video conference of its kind on Monday, 28 May.
It is the first time doctors from the UK will consult in this way with clinicians in the region hit hardest by China’s HIV epidemic.
The Infectious Disease Microbiology and Virology experts will discuss two HIV patient cases – one from Birmingham and one from Henan Province, China.
The teleconference is the culmination of two years’ work by colleagues in the UK and China, who first met in a high-level delegation to Heartlands Hospital by Henan Province’s Health Bureau in 2010.
The conference will be co-chaired by Dr Stephen Taylor, lead consultant at Heartlands HIV Service and Medical Director of Saving Lives, and Dr Qingxia Zhao, head of Infectious Diseases at Zhengzhou City’s Sixth Hospital.
The teleconferences will be a primary means for the two clinical communities to make good on a Joint Declaration of Intent to work in partnership in the fight against HIV signed in 2010; and comes after a total of four reciprocal visits back and forth between Birmingham and Henan.
It is the first in what is planned to be a series of bi-monthly teleconferences, and comes at the end of a four-week visit to the UK by doctors from Henan.
