Li Lanjuan | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
李兰娟 | |||||||
 Li in 2006 | |||||||
| Director-general of the Health Department of Zhejiang Province | |||||||
| In office March 1998 – March 2008 | |||||||
| Personal details | |||||||
| Born | (1947-09-13)13 September 1947 (age 78) | ||||||
| Political party | Chinese Communist Party | ||||||
| Spouse | Zheng Shusen | ||||||
| Children | 1 son | ||||||
| Alma mater | Zhejiang Medical University | ||||||
| Occupation | Epidemiologist,hepatologist | ||||||
| Awards | State Science and Technology Progress Award (6 times) Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize (2014) | ||||||
| Scientific career | |||||||
| Fields | Epidemiology | ||||||
| Institutions | First Affiliated Hospital ofZhejiang University | ||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 李蘭娟 | ||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 李兰娟 | ||||||
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Li Lanjuan (Chinese:李兰娟; born 13 September 1947), also romanized asLan-Juan Li, is aChineseepidemiologist andhepatologist. She is a professor atZhejiang University School of Medicine, an academician of theChinese Academy of Engineering, and serves as the director of the State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases. She developed Li-NBAL, an artificialliver support system that is used to sustain the lives of people suffering fromacute liver failure, and won multiple national awards for her roles in combatting theSARS,H1N1, andH7N9 epidemics.
Li was born on 13 September 1947[1] into a poor peasant family inShaoxing,Zhejiang. She excelled in her studies and tested intoHangzhou High School, a provincial key school.[2]
After graduation, she became a middle school substitute teacher in her township. She also studiedacupuncture at Zhejiang Chinese Medicine Hospital and performed acupuncture for local elders. Her village later recommended her to become abarefoot doctor, and she accepted the offer despite it paying much less than her teaching job.[2] In 1970, when Chinese universities began admittingWorker-Peasant-Soldier students, Li was recommended by her township to study atZhejiang Medical University (nowZhejiang University School of Medicine).[2]
Upon graduation[citation needed][clarification needed][definition needed][dubious –discuss][disputed –discuss] in 1973,[1] Li was assigned to work at the Department of Infectious Diseases at theFirst Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University [zh], commencing her career in epidemiology.[2]Acute liver failure caused byhepatitis B was very common in China. In 1986, Li and her team developed an artificialliver support system (ALSS), also called non-biological artificial liver (NBAL), to detoxify affected people and sustain their lives until the liver regenerates itself or a donor liver becomes available fortransplant.[3] The system, now known as Li-NBAL,[3] has significantly improved survival rates for people with severe chronic hepatitis.[4] Instead of patenting the invention, she disseminated the technology to more than 300 hospitals all over China free of charge.[2]
She was appointed Vice President of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University in October 1993, a position she held for three years. In November 1996 she became deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Infectious Diseases ofMinistry of Health, and was promoted to director six years later. She also served as Director of the Department of Health of the Zhejiang Provincial Government from 1998 to 2008.[1]
During the2003 SARS outbreak, Li led the disease prevention effort in Zhejiang and controlled the disease's spread in the province.[5] During the 2013avian flu outbreak in theYangtze Delta, Li's team isolated theH7N9 strain as the pathogen and proved the strain originated from live poultry markets. Her research prompted the government to close all live poultry markets, preventing the spread of the disease to the rest of China.[5] For her contributions, she was given a special prize of theState Science and Technology Progress Award in 2017.[5]
During theCOVID-19 pandemic, Li was one of the researchers who proposed tolockdown of the centerWuhan (known as Category A prevention and control measures). The lockdown proposal was adopted by the Chinese government, and theWuhan lockdown was implemented at 2pm on 23 January 2020 (before the 2020Chinese New Year's Eve).[6][2] On 1 February, she left for Wuhan with a team of medical workers fromHangzhou to help combat the epidemic.[7][8] On 20 April 2020, Stephen Chen from theSouth China Morning Post reported on research by Li and her team at Zhejiang University, identifying over 30 strains of theSARS-CoV-2 virus, and that some of more aggressive strains generated 270 times as muchviral load as the mildest versions. They discovered that the aggressive strains were linked to outbreaks in Europe and in the state of New York, whereas the less aggressive strains were found in the states of Washington and California.[9]
Li is married toZheng Shusen, a liver transplant expert and also an academician of theChinese Academy of Engineering.[14][15] They have a son named Zheng Jie (郑杰).[16]
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