China News Service, Lhasa, October 30 (Wang Ying, Gonggaraisong) In Longzi at the end of October, the ultraviolet rays are still strong and the chill is beginning to set in. At the People's Hospital of Longzi County, Shannan City, Tibet Autonomous Region, there was a long queue of people waiting for eye screening, and the scene was busy and orderly. Among the crowd, an elderly man who was over seventy years old came to see a doctor in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse from the county centralized nursing center. He said with emotion: "It's so convenient to have medical experts from the mainland waiting at my doorstep."
Recently, under the coordination and promotion of the Changde Group of the 11th Hunan Province Aid to Tibet Team, Changde Li County People's Hospital and Longzi County People's Hospital formally signed a three-year ophthalmology counterpart assistance cooperation agreement. The slit lamp slowly lights up, and a "light relay" spanning three thousand kilometers officially begins in the snowy Longzi.
"You have to climb two mountains with an altitude of 5,000 meters to see eye diseases." The medical difficulties of the local people deeply hurt Changde medical experts. Longzi County is located on the border, with an average altitude of nearly 4,000 meters, strong sunlight radiation, and high incidence of eye diseases such as cataracts, plateau dry eye, and ultraviolet keratitis. However, there is a lack of professional ophthalmologists in the county. Once people suffer from eye diseases, they can only cope with mild cases, while severe cases have to travel for several hours to the city for treatment. For the elderly in centralized care centers, the long journey to seek medical treatment almost means giving up treatment.
"Director Xiong is here again." This is the second time that the ophthalmic bear expert has set foot on the plateau. When she entered Tibet for the first time last year, she suffered from severe altitude sickness and headaches all night long. With oxygen support, she successfully completed 16 cataract surgeries. This year, she once again took the initiative to go to Tibet to protect the bright hope of the people on the plateau.
This time, the expert team conducted eye disease screenings for a total of 185 people, and provided free cataract surgery to 13 patients who met the surgical indications. When walking off the operating table, an old man slowly raised his skinny hand and thanked the experts from the mainland.
The core of assistance is to leave technology on the plateau. According to the agreement, in the next three years, Lixian People's Hospital will rely on mainland expert resources to carry out practical teaching and teach practical skills such as preliminary fundus screening and vision refraction. It will also offer offline special courses on high-altitude eye diseases, and at the same time build a remote assistance system to carry out remote consultation and analysis of difficult cases.
Since the "group-style" medical team in Changde was stationed in July 2025, the medical team has regularly invited mainland experts to Longzi and has performed free vision restoration operations on 16 patients. The team also joined forces with the Beijing Haiying Foundation to invite experts from the Third Xiangya Hospital to conduct scoliosis screening for 81 patients in Longzi, and escorted 2 patients who met the surgical indications to the Third Xiangya Hospital to receive free surgeries, continuing to reduce the medical burden on the people.
The person in charge of Changde's "group-style" medical assistance said that in the next step, the team will deploy according to the "15th Five-Year Plan", make good use of Changde's Tibet aid resources, make up for the shortcomings in orthopedics, cardiology and other disciplines, plan to build infectious diseases and mental health departments, and work together to build 1-2 county key specialties. Steady progress towards the goal of "minor diseases do not leave the county, moderate diseases do not leave the city, and serious diseases do not leave the district", and the planning blueprint is transformed into people's livelihood results that are visible and tangible to the masses.
The snow-capped mountains are speechless, but there is an appointment with the light. Elderly people who have undergone cataract surgery will soon be able to clearly see the work badge on the chest of the caregiver. This road of people's livelihood, built by Changde's Tibet-aid forces to protect the health of people on the plateau, is continuing to extend across the land of Longzi.
