(Yicai) Sept. 11 -- Shanghai’s medical team assigned to Morocco has been working on the front line after a powerful earthquake hit the northern African country last week.

At least 2,122 people have been killed, and over 2,400 have been injured after a 6.8-magnitude quake stuck Morocco at 11.11 p.m. on Sept. 8, according to the country’s ministry of interior affairs.

China has been dispatching medical teams to Morocco since 1975. Shanghai has been the responsible city for the task. By the end of 2021, a total of 1,895 medical staffers in 194 batches provided medical services in public hospitals in Morocco, most of which were in remote mountainous areas and desert zones.

Nurse Liu Yan (on the left) and Doctor Zhang Xi (on the right) from a medical aid team sent by Shanghai Eighth People’s Hospital take a picture outside a hospital in Morocco before the earthquake. Zhang was on duty on the night of Sept. 8.

The Shanghai medical team’s base in Ben Guerir, about 60 kilometers North of Marrakesh, has sustained some damage from the earthquake.

Zhang and Liu perform surgery on a pregnant woman who rushed to the hospital after the earthquake hit on the night of the disaster. With the help of two Moroccan nurses, an itinerant paramedic and a midwife, the woman delivered her baby successfully.

A crowd gathers at the hospital where the Shanghai medical team works on the night of the earthquake. Many ambulances come and go to transfer patients. Over 10 military personnel also came to the hospital.

(The author is a researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges Shanghai Branch of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)

Editor: Futura Costaglione