Quake rescuers: time is life

"Save him." Hou immediately moved away the broken woods, and opened the medical box to treat the man. Hou checked and found that the elderly man, named Amu Gula, just had some external injuries, which were not fatal. Because the man did not get effective treatment after he was injured and he was deficient in food and water, he looked very weak. After Hou had him undergo the disinfection treatment, he gave his dinner that he did not have time to eat to the elderly man. Seeing that the medical team was still rescuing the earthquake-hit people late at night, the elderly man said , "Thank you all, thank you liberation army!"

When it started to get bright, Hou again led the medical team to set up a temporary medical station at Jigu Town’s Square of Nationalities where the public are gathering in order to provide the best possible treatment service for the people. However, Hou fainted at the medical station because of weakness and serious altitude sickness.

Since Hou was on board till the early morning of April 15, he has led his team working for almost 16 hours without a rest. The injuries that Hou got when he joined the relief work in Haiti still hurt. Yushu, which is located at high altitude, is oxygen-poor. Hou has been drained of energy and he has not eaten anything during that period. All these factors combined to make him collapse.

"Has the "tent hospital" been set up? How about the medical treatment station?" When Hou woke up, he first called Fan Haojun, assistant leader of the medial team, who was treating injured people at the medical station. After learning that some difficulties occurred while the "tent hospital" was being built, Hou unplugged the needle, hurrying to the tent hospital site.

No difficulty can stop the team advancing. Now let us see what achievements Hou and his medical team have made with a set of figures: during three days, Hou and his team treated more than 480 injured people, saved 37 seriously injured patients, did 22 operations, appendicitis and closed fluid drainage of pleural cavity, and conducted over 1,000 medical checks on disaster-stricken people and relief workers using electrocardiogram monitor, oxygen machine, Type-B ultrasonic diagnosis scanner and other advanced instruments.

At 11:00 pm, on April 15, Premier Wen Jiabao visited the "tent hospital" built by the General Hospital of Armed Police Force expressing his greetings to all the medical team members.

Remembering the entrust put in him by the premier, Hou will not stop to rest even for a moment. On April 17, when the reporter saw Hou, he was travelling between the tents to arrange medical treatment for the patients. His face remained pale though he has just received oxygen therapy. 　

Since the China international rescue team was established in 2001, Hou and his team have gone to Indonesia, Pakistan, Wenchuan in China's Sichuan Province and other places to conduct disaster relief work for a total of seven times, and every time, they have done an excellent job. 　　

While thinking back over the situation from the past several days, Hou said, "the rescue work is the most difficult I had ever experienced, and my team  have overcome all difficulties to work on the front line of the disaster relief."