Song Zhaopu (first right) conducts a survey in Tiantang Village, Qiling Township, Ruzhou City, Henan Province, on rural medical service system development on Feb. 16, 2023.

At the grassroots level of China's medical service system, rural medical workers are hailed as the "health guards." One of them is Song Zhaopu, a Henan deputy to the 14th National People's Congress (NPC). He is president of the Jingeng Rehabilitation Hospital in Ruzhou, central China's Henan Province.

Zhaopu's father Song Jingeng (1922–1996), a kindhearted man, was a locally famous traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practioner. Zhaopu began to learn TCM knowledge from his father at the age of 16. In his 43-year career, he cured many difficult cases. Many of his patients were exempted from payments. He also volunteers to help the poor and the disabled, including 3,200 children with cerebral palsy (CP). He established a sisterhood with four CP hospitals in the remote northwestern part of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where he has applied TCM to 6,200 ethnic CP cases.