Li Lanjuan

Li Lanjuan a Chinese physician and epidemiologist (born 1947) specialising in infectious diseases and hepatology, who led the national effort against the 2013 outbreak of avian influenza H7N9 and became one of the most prominent medical advisers in the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

Early Life and Education

Li Lanjuan was born on 13 September 1947 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, in eastern China. She grew up in modest circumstances and showed an early aptitude for study, and she was admitted to Zhejiang Medical University, where she completed her medical training during the years of upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

After qualifying she chose to specialise in infectious disease, then a demanding and often poorly rewarded field, and she went on to take advanced training in liver disease. She joined the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Medical University, where she worked for the whole of her clinical career and rose from junior doctor to leading consultant.

She combined clinical practice with laboratory research, an unusual path in the Chinese medicine of the period, and she insisted that the treatment of patients must be guided by evidence from the laboratory. This determination to connect the ward and the bench shaped all her later work.

Career in Infectious Disease and Hepatology

During the 1980s Li Lanjuan made her reputation in the treatment of severe viral hepatitis and liver failure. She developed and promoted the technique of artificial liver support, in which a patient's blood is passed through an apparatus that removes toxins and clears the products of liver failure, giving the organ time to recover or bridging the patient to transplantation.

The method, which she refined through years of clinical experiment, reduced mortality among the sickest patients and became established practice in Chinese hospitals. She also contributed to the understanding of how hepatitis B and other viruses damage the liver, and she built a research centre in Zhejiang that became a national reference point for infectious disease.

She was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2001, and she served as director of the State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases. She trained a large school of clinicians and researchers and helped to raise standards of infectious disease care across the country.

H7N9 and Epidemic Control

In early 2013 a new strain of avian influenza, designated H7N9, appeared in eastern China, causing severe pneumonia and often fatal illness in people who had been in contact with infected poultry. The virus raised the prospect of a new pandemic, and Li Lanjuan was among the clinicians who identified and characterised the earliest cases.

Her team developed a rapid diagnostic test and a treatment protocol, and she pressed for the closure of live poultry markets and for the isolation of patients, measures that were credited with limiting the outbreak. The response was praised internationally as a model of speed and coordination, and it demonstrated China's improved capacity for epidemic control.

The episode reflected the lessons learned from earlier outbreaks, including severe acute respiratory syndrome, and it established Li Lanjuan as one of the country's foremost authorities on emerging infectious disease. She argued that early detection and transparent reporting are the essential conditions of any effective response.

COVID-19 and Public Advice

When the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, Li Lanjuan was appointed to the national expert commission and travelled to the city during the most dangerous phase of the outbreak. She advised the authorities to impose a strict quarantine on the city, a recommendation that was adopted and that marked a turning point in the national response.

She argued for the rapid isolation of cases, the tracing of contacts and the protection of health workers, and she appeared frequently in the media to explain the measures to the public. She and her team also worked on treatment protocols and on the testing of antiviral medicines against the new virus.

Her emphasis fell on practical prevention: the wearing of masks, social distance, hygiene and the early reporting of symptoms. Her public interventions carried weight because of her long record in the treatment of epidemic disease, and she became one of the most trusted medical voices in the country during the crisis.

Legacy

Li Lanjuan is among the most prominent women in Chinese medicine and one of the few to combine a major clinical career with sustained scientific research. Her work on artificial liver support and on infectious disease has been recognised with national awards, and she has been honoured repeatedly for her service in successive epidemics.

She has argued that investment in public health and in the training of disease specialists is a form of national security, since new infections will continue to emerge where people and animals live closely together. Her advocacy has influenced the development of the Chinese disease-control system and of national treatment guidelines.

She remains a professor and a clinician, and she has trained many physicians who now lead infectious disease departments across the country. Her combination of laboratory science, bedside medicine and public advice makes her an unusual figure in modern Chinese medicine, and she is regarded as a model for women entering the field.

See also

• Avian influenza
• Artificial liver support
• Hepatitis B
• Chinese Academy of Engineering