As the flu virus spreads across China, the country's doctors are seeing endless crowds of patients every day. This flood of sick people is putting understaffed hospitals under immense pressure. CGTN's Zheng Chunying has the story.

In Haihe hospital in Tianjin, pediatric services are all suspended. All of the department's overworked doctors have now also fallen ill. They've been seeing more than 60 patients a day since the start of winter.

This heavy workload is all too common for pediatricians in China. According to Shanghai's municipal center for disease control and prevention, visits to internal medicine departments at the city's children's hospitals have peaked at 32-hundred per day. The shortage in pediatricians means many doctors are forced to continue working despite being sick themselves. For some, the work has been too much to even allow for a sip of water or bathroom breaks.

"I work more than 15 hours everyday, from 8 am to 11 pm, no spare time at all. We have to try to see as many patients as possible."

Children under 14 years of age account for a fifth of China's population. There are only 118-thousand pediatricians in the country. That's one doctor for every 23-hundred children. In contrast, in the US, there's one pediatrician for fewer than 700 children. Even more babies are expected to be born in the coming years due to the recent implementation of China's two-child policy. China's pediatric shortage will likely worsen. More work needs to be done to make sure China's kids get proper care. ZHENG CHUNYING CGTN