From the end of 2015 to now, Gansu Province has arranged for two consecutive provincial-level medical aid team to help ten Tibetan hospitals in Gannan and Tianzhu, a Tibetan Autonomous County in Wuwei City in the middle part of Gansu. The medical team consists of experts from the provincial capital's ten best hospitals, covering internal, external, gynecology, pediatrics and other areas.

 

 

Before the arrival of these doctors, many herdsmen with chronic diseases in Maqu County had to travel far to receive medical treatment. Even some with back and leg pain were recommended by local doctors to travel to big hospitals in Lanzhou and Chengdu, capital city of southwest China's Sichuan Province which is about 600 kilometers away from Maqu, while the B-ultrasound and X-ray machines at Maqu County Hospital are basically left unused.

 

In the winter of 2015, Wang Shibiao, chief Chinese medicine expert at Gansu Province's Second People's Hospital, brought a medical team to Maqu. He discovered that there was a "blank space" in the county's Chinese medicine expertise. Wang Shibiao thought:  how to train a local medical team in limited time? He then found Gao Wucai and Yang Xiaobing from the People's Hospital in the County, who both understand some fundamental theories of Chinese medicine, and taught them all kinds of different Chinese medicine techniques.

 

A year later, Wang Shibiao had to return to Lanzhou. The Chinese medicine department at People's Hospital in the County was on track and in full flow, with everything complete including a pharmacy, an extracting room, a fumigation room and a medicated bathroom.

 

"I've made great progress from a year of learning," said Gao Wucai. He has learned eight Chinese medicine techniques, including cupping treatment. Aside from common pains such as pain in the limbs, he can even treat some patients with appendicitis and kidney stones using Chinese medicine.