Story: No holiday for medics, post workers

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Source: CCTV.com | 01-29-2009 14:47

Spring Festival is always a time when people take a break from work and get to spend time with their families. But for certain professions, it's the holidays when they are at their busiest. Yuan Yifang reveals all.

There's always one place you think about when you're feeling sick - hospital.

While everybody else is enjoying the holidays with their  families, the doctors and nurses on duty have to stay alert  for all possible emergencies.

As a well-known Chinese saying goes, doctors and nurses are angels, because they are always there, ready to help.

While everybody else is enjoying the holidays with their families, the doctors and nurses on duty have to stay alert for all possible emergencies.

At the Beijing Emergency Medical Center, staff are busy throughout the year. Phone calls come in and ambulances are sent out. But there's one time of year when there's always extra work to do.

Zhang Libing is one of the team leaders at the dispatching control center. She's been on duty for the past 15 Spring Festivals. And she says they have to pay more attention at that time because that's when there are more outbreaks of infectious diseases. "During the Spring Festival, we have to increase the number of personnel on duty to guarantee all sick people can receive the treatment they need. Spring Festival is a time when friends and families come together, so various diseases tend to occur due to over-exertion, excessive emotion and too much drinking. We must make sure that whenever we answer an emergency call, our ambulances and paramedics are ready." Zhang said.

Many people are injured by fireworks and firecrackers every year, so Beijing Emergency Medical Centre will also dispatch more than 100 ambulances to patrol the main roads on Lunar New Year's Eve and attend to injured people on the spot.

And of course it's not just those in the ambulances, but the entire medical industry that's busier during festival time. And it doesn't stop there. Policemen, shop keepers, gas station attendants, taxi drivers... these are just some of the professions that have to provide 24 hour service, seven days a week, but are rarely noticed by the public.

Most of the postal staff had to celebrate their Spring Festival at work.

At the parcel sorting center at the Beijing Airmail Transit Station, packages in and out of Beijing are stacking up into mini mountains. To speed up the delivery process, staff here have regularly been working day and night.

With the sudden surge in volume before the Spring Festival, staff have been working overtime to ensure as many packages as possible were delivered before New Year's Day. Most of the parcels, of course, are holiday gifts.

But despite their best efforts, the head of the station told us last week he expected it would take until the second day of the Lunar New Year to clear the enormous backlog. And that means most of the staff had to celebrate their Spring Festival at work.

Head of Beijing airmail transit station Zhang Zhanling said "The volume before the Spring Festival has increased a lot. But we're still confident we can process it as quickly as usual, even if we have to sacrifice our free time to ensure the timely and smooth arrival of all the packages."

By adopting an advanced scanning system, the station is providing high speed services of the highest quality all year round.