First air-lift medical team withdraws from Lushan quake zone

Visits to families

The medical team started to make a round of visits to the 3,000 families in the six villages of Taiping on April 25, after most of the victims coming to the medical center in town had been properly treated.

The team came across a special patient in Chunguang village, also known by nearby villagers as "leprosy village", as the village was a place to quarantine lepers in the 1960s. Although the disease is no longer incurable, the nearby villagers are still afraid to go to the village.

Luo Qiying, the 71-year-old leper, whose limbs are deformed and left eye is blind, had a cataract in her right eye. She couldn't close her right eye even when sleeping.

The daughter of Luo only asked the team to help stop the pain of her right eye, but Yao insisted on taking the old woman to Chengdu for treatment. Yao said his hospital should take up responsibility in the disaster.

Luo was sent to the General Hospital on May 1. An operation was done to remove her blind left eye on May 7. The hospital would perform a cataract surgery on Luo three months later.

The medical team lands in Taiping township, Lushan county, Sichuan province, seven hours after a magnitude-7.0 earthquake hits Lushan county on April 20.

The medical team starts to treat quake victims as soon as they arrive at the temporary medical center in Taiping.