Year in review: Most touching stories of 2019

Editor's note: 2019 has brought many news stories that moved us, such as a 6-day-old baby whose donated organs gave hope to others, a 60-year-old teacher devoted to rural education, doctors who never gave up to save patients, and three generations passing on the tradition to protect their home from desertification. We've selected some of the most touching stories to warm your heart at the close of the year.

Doctors revive patient whose heart stopped beating for 72 hours

A group of doctors in Xiamen, Fujian province, saved the life of a 26-year-old woman whose heart stopped beating for 72 hours.

On Jan 1, the woman had ventricular fibrillation when she was receiving treatment at the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University. Her heart stopped beating and she lost consciousness. She was later diagnosed with fulminant myocarditis (FM), an inflammatory process in the myocardium causing acute heart failure.

Doctors from the emergency department and the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation on her for two hours but failed.

According to the medical treatment standard, the woman was supposed to have been declared dead in that condition. But the doctors didn't give up. "She's so young and we wanted to try additional efforts to give her a fighting chance," said Zhang Minwei, director of the intensive care unit, or ICU, at the hospital.

So they transferred the patient to the ICU and used medical devices to perform the functions of her organs. Thanks to the doctors' efforts, the patient regained some consciousness the next day and her heart started to beat after 72 hours.