The First People's Hospital in Xiangyang, Hubei province is filled with children who suffer the festival illness. Physicians warn people should not eat or drink too much and become too tired during the celebrations. [Photo by Gong Bo / for China Daily]

The Spring Festival is a season of fun for all Chinese, but too much eating and drinking can pose many risks, medical experts tell Liu Zhihua.

With the Spring Festival - the most important celebration of the year for the Chinese - arriving in about one week, people are getting excited about the coming seven-day holiday. Some will celebrate even longer, as the festival traditionally lasts throughout the first half of the first lunar month.

Yet while most people will leave their regular work for family time and big feasts, medical professionals, especially those in emergency departments, will get increasingly busy.

"While people are relaxed and enjoying the holiday, we actually raise the numbers of ambulances and physicians on duty to make sure that people's happiness can last," says Liu Hongmei, vice director of the Beijing Emergency Medical Center, better known as Beijing 120.

She says the use of ambulances at the center usually increases 10 percent during the festival.

Yang Xu, an emergency physician who has worked at Beijing 120 for 13 years, says there is a spike in incidents of stroke, heart conditions, injuries, alcohol intoxication and stomach upset during the holiday period.

"On Spring Festival, when people leave their normal routines for holiday fun, they tend to indulge at get-togethers, parties, feasts and late nights. Many are not aware of the health risks in those holiday activities," Yang says, adding that the winter cold poses a higher risk for brain and cardiovascular disease - the leading causes of emergency calls year-round.

Alcohol intoxication cases rise as much as 10 percent during the holiday. Injuries, usually from fireworks explosions, car accidents, fighting, skiing and skating, together with severe stomach upset, often rank among the top causes of ambulance calls, according to Beijing 120's Liu.

"Every Spring Festival, we have to remove eyeballs from people who are badly hurt by fireworks," says Zheng Ya'an, director with the emergency department of Peking University Third Hospital.

Fireworks accidents mostly hurt eyes and fingers, which are small but important for quality life. With the improved quality of fireworks in recent years, such accidents are less common than a decade ago, but several cases occur every Spring Festival, Zheng says.

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