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“If we had used a conventional major liver resection to remove the tumor, which was extremely large, the patient’s life would still have been at risk due to the tiny size of the remaining liver, which could lead to organ failure. Therefore, we applied the new method, despite concerns that the low oxygen levels on the plateau might affect liver regeneration,” Xu told NewsChina.　

During his tenure as deputy president and head of general surgery of the People’s Hospital of Xizang Autonomous Region since 2023, Xu has pioneered new types of complex surgery in the region, introducing them to local surgeons. In the liver patient’s case, Xu employed a procedure known as ALPPS, a two-stage operation consisting of portal vein ligation and tumor removal used to increase liver volume when removal of tumors leaves only a small remnant.　

His contributions are part of a program to provide medical aid to the remote high-plateau region.　

Founded in 1994, the program has involved tens of thousands of doctors and nurses from top hospitals in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, who work in the region for one to three years.　

While introducing cutting-edge knowledge, techniques, equipment and management, they also provide training to Tibetan colleagues in the metropolitan hospitals and initiate remote consultations. Thanks to the paired assistance between inland provinces and Xizang, 4,400 new diagnosis and treatment techniques have been introduced since 2015, Liu Kui, director of the finance department of the National Health Commission, said at a press conference on November 29, 2024.　

All public medical institutions at the township level and above are now able to provide telemedicine services, Guo Luo, deputy director of Xizang’s Health Commission, said at the same press conference, adding that less than 10 percent of total healthcare expenses are paid out of pocket. Today, the region’s top hospitals are able to treat more than 400 serious illnesses like brain tumors and childhood leukemia. City and prefecture hospitals can handle more than 2,000 types of less serious conditions, including heart attacks and strokes, and minor illness can be treated in grassroot clinics near home, Guo noted.　

This means that Tibetans can receive high-quality medical care in the region.　

“I remember that my parent’s generation had to visit doctors in big cities like Beijing and Chengdu [Sichuan Province] when they were seriously ill, but now it’s not necessary,” Pari Sangye Shung, a 40-year-old traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) practitioner at Ganlu Tibetan Medicine Pharmacy in Lhasa told NewsChina in June. TTM plays a key role in local healthcare networks which cover prefecture, county, township and village levels. All community health service centers around Xizang offer TTM, according to the Xizang Health Commission. China’s first national TTM center was launched in December 2024, focusing on TTM research and standard setting.　

Due to all these tremendous efforts on accessible and affordable healthcare services, Xizang has made great progress on the health condition of its people. It means that life expectancies are much higher and the general population is much healthier than 60 years ago when Xizang Autonomous Region was founded.

Pelzong felt ashamed of her condition and out of fear of being mocked, she never played with her classmates.　

But in 2024 she was full of confidence when the then college student volunteered to serve as a Chinese-Tibetan translator for the Love of Gesang Flower Charity Campaign. Organized by Xigaze People’s Hospital and Shanghai Children’s Hospital, the campaign was established in 2013, aiming to provide free treatment and surgeries to Tibetan children with DDH.　

Thanks to Yang Xiaodong, former deputy president of Xigaze Children’s Hospital and founder of the campaign, Pelzong and another 29 Tibetan children underwent free surgery in Shanghai in 2014. Over the next three years, following surgery on her other hip and subsequent physical rehab, her walking gait was corrected.　

“She’s the first and oldest child from Xizang to receive the surgery. Her age means the operation is difficult, so I invited Ying Hao, the most prestigious pediatric orthopedic specialist to be the primary surgeon,” Yang, who has also worked for Shanghai Children’s Hospital, told Shanghai media outlet Eastday. com last year.　

Yang was part of the seventh team of medical experts from Shanghai to participate in the Xizang healthcare aid program, living in Xigaze from 2013 to 2016. “Before heading to Xizang, we thought the epidemic disease among children on the plateau could have been congenital heart disease, but later we realized DDH was far more prevalent,” Yang told NewsChina in May. As to why the condition is prevalent in the region, Yang and Xigaze People’s Hospital’s orthopedist Feng Xiang suggested in a paper published in 2016 in the Journal of Applied Clinical Pediatrics that Tibetan infants’ legs used to be swaddled in a blanket that restricted their movement, which prevented healthy hip development. There are other risk factors, including altitude, genetics and being female.　

Yang said he once visited a county in Xizang and was shocked to find there were nearly 200 children with DDH.　

“In Shanghai, DDH shouldn’t be a problem as newborns are screened for it at 42 days old. We rarely see it by the time a child reaches a year old,” Yang told NewsChina.　

To reduce DDH in Xizang, Yang submitted a proposal to the Shanghai Health Commission at the end of 2013, asking for the support to launch a screening program, especially for rural children.　

“Treating DDH is much easier in infancy than in later childhood, as you only need a plaster cast to correct it. But after around 6 years old, the child might need surgery. If the bone deformity hasn’t been corrected after the age of 8, the surgery is quite difficult,” Yang said.　

Since the program started, anesthetists, doctors and nurses from Xigaze People’s Hospital have visited hospitals in Shanghai with Xizang’s young DDH patients, to study treatments and surgical procedures for hip joint correction.　

In the latest decade, more than 10,000 Tibetan children have been screened for DDH and 67 groups of patients have received 608 free surgeries funded by the campaign in Shanghai. An interactive prevention and control system for DDH has been established between Shanghai and Xizang to track the progress of young patients, the Shanghai Health Commission released in June 2023.　

Yang told NewsChina he could have ignored the DDH cases in Xizang as the disease was not in his remit for the healthcare aid program. But if he gave up without founding the campaign, children with the condition would have always felt marginalized.　

Doctors from paired-up provinces and municipalities are also always ready for emergency rescues on the plateau, often working against altitude sickness.　

One midnight in 2015, spinal surgeon Zhu Xiaodong at Shanghai’s Changhai Hospital received a call, asking him to take the earliest flight to Xizang to help a man suffering from brain trauma and severe fractures, including to his spine, after a car accident in Xigaze.　

Rushing to the hospital, Zhu checked the injured man before conducting surgery in a poorly equipped operating room. After five and a half hours, Zhu was able to save the man, who recovered enough to be able to move himself in a wheelchair. Although his legs were paralyzed, it was a much better result than doctors expected. For Yang, this was the most difficult, thrilling and impeccable emergency surgery he had witnessed in Xizang.

“Although it wasn’t my first keyhole pancreatic and duodenal surgery, the discussion helped build confidence for my Tibetan colleagues. After all, my ultimate goal is to guide them to perform the surgery independently,” Xu told NewsChina.　

The surgery, lasting nine-and-a-half hours, was completed successfully without complications.　

Like Xu, who prolonged his tenure in Xizang from one to two years to underpin his medical programs at the People’s Hospital of Xizang Autonomous Region, many doctors enrolled in the medical assistance program head to the plateau with the same aspirations that their Xizang colleagues have when they go to cities like Beijing and Shanghai – they want to gain experience by treating as many illnesses as possible and excel in their specialties.　

According to the white paper titled Human Rights in Xizang in the New Era released in March 2025 by China’s State Council Information Office, with the support of medical staff from paired-up provinces and municipalities to Xizang, 5,536 healthcare professionals in the region have received training since 2015.　

Xigaze People’s Hospital’s orthopedist Feng Xiang, who has worked there for 16 years, had been to Shanghai three times for training. The first time, he honed his skills in ultrasound examination and DDH surgeries. The second time, he headed to the Judicial Expertise Center of East China University of Political Science and Law to focus on forensic science studies. In his last visit, he studied at Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University.　

“Before these training programs, I’d never met any distinguished experts [in medical fields] except my university mentor. Over the past few years as I observed orthopedists do surgeries in Shanghai, I really learned a lot,” Feng told NewsChina in June.　

“For instance, if I didn’t have that contact with Shanghai experts, I would have never known that the criteria to set a fractured bone are more specific and meticulous than a simple alignment,” Feng said.　

Some years ago, Feng was trying to treat a boy with a tibial fracture, but he was confused when it would not heal. After a remote consultation with Shen Yang, an orthopedist in Shanghai, Feng realized the boy suffered from arthritis, not a fracture.　

Today, Feng can partner with his Shanghai counterparts to operate on serious illnesses such as spinal tumors.　

“In addition to improving our professional techniques, these external medical teams have changed our management systems,” Feng said.　

He said salaries at Xigaze People’s Hospital were distributed equally for many years until the Shanghai experts arrived. To encourage progress, the Shanghainese introduced performance assessments in 2017 to reward those who are more competent and diligent.　

After the reform, visits to outpatient and emergency departments at Xigaze People’s Hospital increased by 25 percent, hospital admissions by 4 percent, surgical procedures by 35 percent, successful resuscitation rates by 4.3 percent and average length of stay was down by 1.8 days, news outlet Kanknews.com reported when Xigaze People’s Hospital was ranked among China’s top general hospitals in June 2018.　

Two of Xigaze People’s Hospital’s projects proposed to the National Natural Science Foundation have passed review and seven papers on common regional diseases have been included in the Science Citation Index, Zhang Wenhua, director of Xigaze People’s Hospital’s publicity office, told NewsChina.　

According to the Xizang Health Commission, all eight hospitals supported by the aid program since 2015, including the People’s Hospital of Xizang Autonomous Region and seven at the prefecture or city level, have been upgraded to higher categories in China’s hospital system. In 2021, the program expanded to 13 county hospitals in Xizang.

“For over 1,000 years on this sparsely populated plateau, Tibetan medicines have little changed since all the herbs we use are purely from nature,” Pari Sangye Shung told NewsChina. “Lots of locals prefer TTM hospitals when they get ill and many hospitals in Xizang have TTM departments, regardless of their level.”　

In today’s TTM hospitals in Xizang, while they continue to offer their own traditional medical services, these exist side-by-side with MRIs, heart monitoring and blood tests.

　

“We diagnose with auxiliary equipment to show our respect for modern medicine. In some TTM hospitals, even genetic testing is applied if it’s difficult to diagnose a condition,” Pari Sangye Shung said.　

According to the doctor, modern medical approaches and medicines including surgery are necessary when dealing with acute diseases such as gallstones, but more will choose TTM when treating stroke or partial paralysis.　

In 2018, Tibetan herbal bath therapy, a distinctive method to expel pathogens by balancing the body and mind with mineral springs or herbal waters, was listed on the roster of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. In 2023, The Four Treatises of Tibetan Medicine was included in the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register. In April 2025, textbooks based on the document were unveiled for students doing a master’s degree at the University of Tibetan Medicine in Lhasa.　

Pari Sangye Shung is confident that medical cooperation between the Han and Tibetan ethnic groups will endure. “This connection has lasted for more than 1,000 years, dating back to Princess Wencheng’s journey from Chang’an (now Xi’an) to Xizang to marry during the early Tang Dynasty (618-907). That bond remains strong today.”