China-Africa Stories | The laboratory specialist who taught Mali's technicians at the microscope

【Editor's note: 2026 marks the China-Africa Year of People-to-People Exchanges. This is the third in a series of China-Africa stories from Zhejiang University, featuring the students, researchers and alumni working to bring the two sides closer. This installment turns to a laboratory specialist who has worked in two African countries.】

On 12 March 2026, Guo Renyong was named one of the ten inaugural "Most Beautiful Medical Workers" of Zhejiang Province. He has spent 25 years in clinical laboratory work and now serves as deputy director in charge of the Department of Clinical Laboratory at the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine (FAHZU), where he holds the title of chief technologist. Twice, he has packed his instruments for Africa.

In 2004, three years after he joined the laboratory, he volunteered for China's medical aid team to the Central African Republic. He spent more than 700 days in Bangui, at the Friendship Hospital, working in rudimentary conditions and living in a difficult environment.

He came home in 2006 with the Central African Republic's national Knight's Medal, awarded for his service to the country's health care. Fourteen years later he volunteered again. What he remembered, he has said, was the standing Chinese doctors enjoyed there: the expectation, the respect and the trust. He put it simply: "I have never regretted it."

The second posting began in October 2020: 18 months in Bamako, the Malian capital, as COVID-19 swept the world. Malian hospitals had little equipment and less testing capacity. Guo Renyong became, in effect, the laboratory's engineer, coaxing several long-idle machines back into service. With support from colleagues at home he took the lead in setting up a PCR laboratory at Hôpital du Mali, advising Malian staff on the layout of the rooms, the positioning of equipment and the allocation of people. The laboratory went on to run nucleic acid tests for COVID-19, hepatitis B and HIV.

Quality control was the quieter part of the job. He bought a water quality test pen with his own money, wrote standard operating procedures for internal quality control and ran training sessions, all aimed at one thing: reports that local staff could stand behind. By the time he left, the technicians' skills and the accuracy of their reports had improved markedly.

The teaching was hands-on. In December 2020 he stood behind Malian technicians as they read blood films, going through cell morphology slide by slide: how to tell one type of cell from another. He was not there to read the slides for them. The aim was to leave behind a laboratory team that would still be working after the Chinese mission flew home.

Some patients could not wait for a schedule. People with leukemia travelled long distances to Bamako for bone marrow smears, often with no money for a hotel; a report that arrived a day late meant a night on the street. Marrow analysis is slow and exacting. Guo Renyong stayed at the bench until the reports were signed, however late the hour.

He returned to Hangzhou in April 2022. At FAHZU he had been among the first into the fever clinic during SARS in 2003, worked three months straight through avian influenza in 2013 and entered the isolation wards in early 2020; he also helped the department win ISO 15189 and US CAP accreditation. Later he was named a Moral Model of Zhejiang Province. "Life on an aid mission is hard," he said of the two postings, "but it has tempered me, and I have made deep friends among local doctors and local people."