World-renowned leprosy expert Li Huanying passed away at the age of 101 in Beijing on Friday, according to the Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University.

Born in 1921 in Beijing, Li graduated from the School of Medicine at Tongji University in Shanghai and Johns Hopkins University in the United States. 

She became one of the first officials in the World Health Organization (WHO) at 29. After seven years of service, she returned to China to join the country's fight against infectious diseases.

Her study of leprosy started in 1978 when she was transferred to the Beijing Friendship Hospital.

The ancient disease can cause deformity and disability in humans if not treated quickly.

Li traveled to almost all of the "leprosy villages" in China's Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, traversing mountains to see patients. Some of the villages were only accessible through cable climbing.

After decades of research, Li verified a new way of treating the disease, called "short-term multidrug therapy," which helped reduce the number of cases from more than 110,000 to less than 10,000.

The therapy was adopted worldwide in 1994 with the help of the WHO.

With the effort of Li and many other medical workers, China announced in 2007 that the country had eliminated leprosy as a public health concern.

Li was awarded the First Prize of the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award in 2001.

She also received a lifetime achievement award for China's prevention and treatment of leprosy in 2016, after which she, at the age of 95, decided to join the Communist Party of China, saying, "now I'm sure I'm qualified."

She was honored with the title "Role Model of the Times" in 2021.