This morning we received this email from Kunga Tashi, Seva's Program Director in Lhasa, Tibet with reports of the situation in Yushu: Re: Devastating earthquake in Yushu Dear all, Several strong earthquakes struck Yushu early this morning. The epicenter is 20 miles from town of Yushu. Hundreds of people lost their lives, thousands buried.

Dr Dorjee, an ophthalmologist from the Kham Eye Center, was conducting eye camps in the Yushu area when the earthquake struck and he and his medical team have rushed to the disaster area to provide medical relief. Photo: Seva Tibet

A Kham Eye Center team led by Dr. Dorjee had just completed a screening camp yesterday in Sershul, 90km east of Yushu and was about to leave for Dege for the next camp. After hearing the big damage in Yushu this morning, his team left for the disaster area and is now rescuing the injured. I managed to talk to Nima (assistant director of the Kham Eye Centre) over phone around 7pm. She said the entire infrastructure is damaged. She can only receive incoming calls from time to time. According to Nima, Yushu Hospital has collapsed. Around 70% of the hospital staff are either dead in the hospital or in their houses. The Kham Eye Center team is rescuing people in a school. The old part of the town is completely flat as she stated. (UPDATE TO THIS BLOG: On April 19th we learned that the hospital in Yushu did not collapse but was damaged and cracked. One staff member died.) I spoke to Dr. Norbu Tsering early this morning and he was hurrying to the hospital. Norbu’s line was permanently off since then. Then I spoke with Dondup Tsering, former director of the Disabled Person’s Federation now serving as head of Yushu TV, and he told me that almost all the houses are collapsed and he was with a rescue team and would talk with me later. Things are much worse than what has reported in the media. A medical team of 15 people from Dartsedo is on the way to Yushu. I have no clue what we can do at this stage but I asked the folks in Yushu to let us know if we can be of any help for the victims in Yushu. Kunga According to the media reports on the morning of April 14th, at least 400 people have been killed and more have been injured or trapped in rubble after a series of six earthquakes hit Yushu County in Qinghai Province. Officials said more than 10,000 people were injured. The China Earthquake Networks Centre put the biggest shock at magnitude 7.1, although the US Geological Survey put it at 6.9. The Haiti quake which killed more than 200,000 and left 1m homeless in January was magnitude 7. The China Earthquake Administration said phone lines were down, hindering rescue efforts, while workers were racing to release water from a cracked reservoir. The epicentre of the first quake was located 235 miles south-south-east of Golmud, a large city in Qinghai, at a depth of six miles, the US Geological Survey said. Yushu county is a largely Tibetan area. Seva has been been working in the Yushu area since 1995 and is the main eye care provider in the region which has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world. Our colleagues in the Kham Eye Center in Dartsedo to the south, faced a similar nightmare during the Sichuan earthquake which struck on May 12, 2008 and which measured 7.9 or 8.0 on the Richter scale. Everyone at Seva is deeply saddened by this latest tragedy to hit an area that has already suffered so much. With such destruction to the hospital and health care system, there will certainly be much for Seva to do. The people in Yushu will need our help to rebuild the eye care services at the hospital, possibly replace equipment and perhaps help fund the repair of the hospital.