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Hospital helps quake victims
19/05/2008 13:07 - (SA)
Chengdu, China - Hong Zheng is supposed to be handling breast cancer cases, but since a massive earthquake ravaged southwestern China a week ago, everyone at Huaxi Hospital has been working virtually non-stop.
Every five minutes, another ambulance arrives here at the largest hospital in the Sichuan provincial capital Chengdu with victims of the quake, which killed an estimated 50 000 people and injured more than 220 000 others.
As one ambulance comes in with a patient on a stretcher and two more in wheelchairs, doctors, nurses and medical students in white jackets throng the hospital corridors, one carrying a clipboard and another with a loudhailer.
The number of medical staff here has swelled to more than a thousand as doctors arrive from as far away as Beijing and Hong Kong to help the relief effort.
The bespectacled Hong, 43, who has conducted cancer research in France and speaks almost flawless English, was set to work in the emergency room, and said all non-quake patients have been transferred.
Sanctuary for the injured
Most of the quake victims arrive with fractures, but many also suffer organ failure and low blood pressure after their long wait to be rescued, said Hong, who saw one patient die in front of him.
"It takes 30 to 60 hours for the rescue process, so when they arrive here they are already seriously damaged," he said.
The hospital has already treated 1 345 earthquake victims and completed 639 surgeries, with 439 beds prepared for new patients, said its dean, Shi Yingkang.
While hospitals closer to the epicentre of the quake were badly hit, forcing doctors to work from tents, the massive high-rise towers of Huaxi Hospital are a clean and relatively advanced sanctuary for the injured.
On Sunday an imaging system went live to link what was the largest hospital in badly-damaged Mianzhu city with Huaxi.
The link enables doctors at what remains of the Mianzhu medical centre to send computer-aided X-ray images and seek advice from their colleagues in Chengdu, said Liu Rongbo, one of the doctors operating the system.
Mental problems
Shi said that the hospital has so far been able to cope, thanks to the doctors from other cities, but warned of a shortage of psychologists.
Huaxi has 70 psychologists, enough for its own patients, but other hospitals have far fewer mental-health specialists, said Shi, estimating the city needs 200.
"Some patients have mental problems now," he said. "Some victims want to commit suicide because their family members were lost."
Shi, a cardiac surgeon who has spent 15 years as chief of the hospital, said the situation is unprecedented.
"I have never dealt with such a disaster with so many injured people," he said. "I am tired."
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