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Tibetan dialects a barrier for quake relief

By Zuo Likun (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-04-16 08:53

Language barriers due to Tibetan dialects add to the uphill task of earthquake relief in northwest China's Qinghai Province, as nearly 100 Tibetan-savvy college students volunteered themselves on Thursday at local hospitals in the capital city Xining.

"Only a few doctors here could speak Tibetan. So I put up a calling online Wednesday, both at Baidu club and my QQ zone," the self-initiated organizer Yang Jing said in a telephone interview.

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Nearly 100 college students turned up for help and they are "distributed at almost every big hospital in Xining today," said Yang at the Qinghai People's Hospital, one of the places where quake victims airlifted from the epicenter Yushu Prefecture received medical treatment.

As of 6 pm Thursday afternoon, "100 earthquake victims have been transferred here, mostly with limb and thoracic fractures," said the hospital chief Xi Aiqi. He admits the language difficulties in rescue efforts, though assuring that "there are adequate nurses to handle this so far."

"But we are very busy," Xi said, before hastily hanging up the phone as an ambulance siren just whistled by.

So far, the death toll from Wednesday's 7.1-magnitude earthquake in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu has risen to 760, with another 11,477 injured, rescuers said Thursday.