In Yemen, there is a group of Chinese people, hard-working, exquisite in the art of healing, nice to patients, with curing hands. The Chinese medical staff are called the "white angels along the Red Sea".

For more than four decades, Chinese doctors and nurses have been trying to save lives of the Yemeni people. In 2007 alone, the163-member Chinese medical team treated more than 130,000 patients in Yemen, including about 3,000 seriously-ill ones, and carried out 22,806 operations.

In July 2007, a 50-year-old Yemeni man severely injured his right hand during a car accident. Local doctors feared that there was no other means but to amputate the hand. Chinese orthopedist in Yemen Xie Shaobo decided to replant the amputated hand after careful examination.

After more than five hours of operation, Xie and his colleagues successfully replanted the hand back onto the patient's wrist, which was the first case in Yemen's medical history.

On September 12, 2006, a deadly stampede occurred during a presidential election speech gathering in Yemen and hundreds were hurt. The Chinese medical staff rushed to the accident scene and managed to save many casualties in less than 20 minutes.

Even the interpreter helped in the heart pressure work. In about four hours, Chinese doctors and nurses treated nearly 100 of the injured participants.

These are just a few of the many life-saving cases that the Chinese medical team has carried out over the past 42 years. Altogether 92 teams, about 3,000 Chinese medical staff, have worked in Yemen since 1966, and have saved many lives.

In the second year of the Chinese medical team's first arrival, the overthrown royalist forces gathered 40,000 soldiers to besiege Sanaa for 70 days. All foreign medical staff left the capital except the Chinese doctors, who worked with local medical personnel and tried to save as many lives as they could.

According to former Chinese ambassador to Yemen Shi Yanchun, the Chinese doctors and nurses could only sleep three to four hours a day during the 70-day siege when they were busy in attending to the injured. Their bravery and devotion has won wide praise from the Yemeni people.

In the past 42 years, the Chinese medical staff had performed numerous operations for the Yemenis, including some highly difficult ones, such as intra-cranial tumor extraction and excision of esophageal cancer. The Chinese experts have also used acupuncture to cure many hemiplegia and cerebrovascular sequelae patients.

As Chinese Ambassador Luo Xiaoguang told Xinhua, the outstanding, long-term work of the Chinese medical team in Yemen has won wide-spread recognition by the Yemeni government and its people.

Medical cooperation between the two countries has contributed greatly to the bilateral cooperative relations. The Chinese medical team has built the friendly ties between the two peoples through its sincere and hard efforts, the ambassador said.

(Xinhua News Agency June 25, 2008)