(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-29 13:25

Despite speaking different languages, medical teams from many countries and regions are doing everything they can to assist earthquake relief efforts in southwest China.

"Xiao Gan" is the nickname locals have given to Chinese Russian doctor Gan Junda.

The 25-year-old volunteered to come to the quake-shaken areas as soon as he heard the news.

"When I saw the tragic scenes on TV, I felt like my own family members were suffering the disaster," he said.

Gan migrated with his family to Russia from Chongqing Municipality, a city hundreds of kilometers away from the epicenter, when he was six years old.

As well as Russian, he is fluent in the Chongqing dialect and has helped him better communicate with local people. He also interprets for his colleagues when not seeing to the injured.

He's exhausted by the end of long days caring for the ill and injured, but, as he says, "physical fatigue gives way to pride in the fact I can use what I have learnt to serve my compatriots".

Gan said he also felt lucky he could use the leechcraft (art of healing) he had learned in Russia to rescue and comfort victims.

When he saw a boy he had operated running and playing in the sun, he knew he had made the right choice to come back to Sichuan.

Japanese nurse Takano Hiroko is assigned to a blood dialysis center of Huaxi Hospital in Chengdu.

Having joined many overseas rescue tasks, she is still deeply moved by the gratitude of her Chinese patients.

"Actually, I didn't do much work since I cannot communicate well with my patients. But they will say thank you for even a little care you give to them. I was deeply moved."

Though she cannot speak Chinese, Takano looks after her patients meticulously, working almost 12 hours a day.

"My family give me a lot of support," Hiroko said. "Japan is also a country with frequent earthquakes. Many Japanese doctors are willing to share with the Chinese side their experience in quake relief, and help the Chinese people to fight against the disaster."

In the destroyed town of Shigu, of Shifang City, Belgian medical teams received a warm welcome from local residents.

"I never received such a warm welcome," team head Peter Vanden Broeck.

"Though the survivors have little material, they brought to us things to eat and drink. They are very friendly."

With the assistance of local residents and soldiers, the 250 tents they brought with them were set up the first night.

Outside the tents, messages written by children welcome their "Dear Belgian uncles", both in Chinese and English.

We sincerely appreciate what you have done for us", "you are our friends forever" and, "We love humorous Peter".

Broeck has taken part in many past overseas relief tasks, such as the tsunami disaster in December 2004, but this China trip left him with the "deepest impression". "I have never before seen such a miserable disaster. But I had witnessed how the entire nation united as one to rescue people in the disaster areas," he said.

The day he left Belgium for China was his wife's birthday. "She understands," he said.

According to the latest statistics, 11 medical teams of 285 medical personnel from Russia, Japan, Italy, German, Britain, France, Cuba, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao had arrived in the earthquake-hit areas.

Xinhua

(China Daily 05/29/2008 page4)