A toxicologist from our School of Medicine, Wolf witnessed the nationwide celebration on July 1 marking the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. She noticed more personal automobiles crowding the streets of Shenyang, an industrial city of six million in northeastern China. She learned that many more Chinese have telephones.
Cellular phones are a conspicuous favorite in Shenyang.
The widespread availability of telephones is crucial to Wolf's own work in China. She's helping physicians in Shenyang to establish China's first poison control center, which was scheduled to begin answering emergency phone calls last month. The new center is the most recent achievement in a long-standing collaboration between Shenyang's China Medical University and the Department of Emergency Medicine at Wright State. A poison control center organized along Western lines is primarily an information resource service conducted by telephone, according to Wolf, a board-certified toxicologist and assistant professor of emergency medicine at Wright State. Getting dedicated phone lines was a necessary step in setting up the center at China Medical University's hospital in Shenyang.