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Efforts focus on meeting long-term health needs of earthquake survivors
STAMFORD, CT – AmeriCares today announced it has completed construction of a field hospital in Qingchuan, an area where 250,000 residents lost their only hospital following China’s 7.9-magnitude earthquake on May 12. Designed to address the region’s long-term medical needs, the hospital will be stocked and occupied immediately. Qingchuan was severely affected by the initial earthquake and has suffered many aftershocks.
“The field hospital our team has built in Qingchuan will restore the vital ability for doctors to provide inpatient services and long-term care for survivors of the earthquake,” said Curt Welling, president and CEO of AmeriCares. “In addition to providing this new field hospital, AmeriCares staff and partners on the ground in China are working tirelessly to support the recovery efforts and to develop plans for the ongoing health care needs in the affected regions.”
Currently, Qingchuan’s medical needs are being addressed in improvised structures that can only provide outpatient services. More serious cases cannot be treated at the current facility and must be referred to the nearest hospital, more than three hours away.
Staffed by local Chinese doctors and equipped by AmeriCares, the field hospital comes in advance of the shipment of other critically-needed medical supplies, including anesthetics and nutritionals for diabetics to the Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital in Chengdu, a water purification treatment that will provide clean water to 30,000 children in Guanyuan Prefecture, where Qingchuan County is located, as well as delivering additional medicines and medical supplies to supplement our initial delivery on May 22. AmeriCares was one of the first private relief organizations to provide aid to Chengdu, the capital of the hard-hit Sichuan Province.
NWA Cargo donated the transportation costs for delivering the field hospital, which is a product of Blu-Med Response Systems.
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About AmeriCaresAmeriCares is a private, nonprofit international disaster relief and humanitarian aid organization, which delivers medicines, medical supplies and aid to people in crisis around the world. Since it was established in 1982, AmeriCares has distributed more than
$10 Billion in humanitarian aid to 137 countries. For more information, please visit www.americares.org.