USA Today Reports on Heart to Heart's Work Near Epicenter of Quake in China

USA Today reporter Calum MacLeod has been covering the tragic aftermath of the magnitude-7.9 earthquake that struck Monday in Sichuan Province, located in southwest China. As he entered the Bechuan county, the epicenter of the deadly quake, MacLeod met an American--Dr. Brian Robinson, Heart to Heart's medical director, who lives in Chengdu and runs our year-round health program in Sichuan.

Here is what MacLeod said:

'My spirit is still strong'

In southern Beichuan, workers searched furiously for survivors at the town's middle school, where at least 1,000 students and teachers were thought to be buried. The building's collapse continues a morbid trend: At least nine schools have crumbled across the zone affected by the quake.

About 100 people have been rescued from the school's rubble, said Li Yinxian, a doctor who is leading a team from the Mianyang Third Hospital.

Li had slept just one hour since arriving on the scene Monday night. "We can't sleep anyway, as there is terror in our minds. We have never experienced anything like this before," Li said.

"I am willing to stay here longer," Li said. "My spirit is still strong."

Standing amid the wreckage in Beichuan was Brian Robinson, a doctor from Oklahoma. China's government has officially turned down foreign aid groups' offers to provide help on the ground, but Robinson has lived in the provincial capital, Chengdu, for nine years. He is a representative of Kansas City-based Heart to Heart International, an organization that sends doctors to developing countries.

Robinson gathered a team of 13 other American volunteers from Chengdu, which has a fast-growing expatriate population, and headed to Beichuan to help the wounded onto ambulances and trucks.

"I am impressed by the amount of aid they have got in there," Robinson said. "But it will be days before there is total access to the main part of Beichuan. Only helicopters can get there" with many roads still impassable due to debris, he said.

Robinson and his team spent Wednesday assisting the wounded and distributing medicines, water, saline and IV kits to the front line.

"It is as well-organized as it could be," Robinson said. However, he said no one had yet compiled a list of the living or dead, and people were streaming in from all over the country to check on relatives. So Robinson and his colleagues were trying to set up a central registry on Wednesday night.

You can read the whole story from this morning's edition of the USA Today here.

Because Heart to Heart has an office based in Sichuan and has a strong relationship with Chinese health and emergency officials, we are being asked to participate in the response.

We know this part of China and its people. For the past 11 years, we have been working alongside Sichuan health officials to improve medical expertise and enhance the health of the province's 90 million people. Sichuan is often called the "rice bowl of China," because it feeds the rest of the country. Unlike the east coast of China, where the national economy growing by leaps and bounds, many families in Sichuan survive on less than $1 a day.

You can help us provide more aid. Make an online donation today, or give by calling our toll-free hotline (866-341-GIVE). Every donation counts. Heart to Heart has historically operated on less than 2 percent overhead--meaning that more than 98 percent of every contribution goes directly to help people in need. And because we are able to leverage corporate donations of medical aid and transportation, as well as tremendous volunteer support, we are able to transform every $1 cash donation into $25 worth of aid, on average. For more information, read our latest annual report by clicking here.

We need your support to help quake survivors in China.