China’s Quake: Avoiding the Political Aftershocks

TIME Magazine, 9 April 2010

On the high plains of Qinghai province … a massive earthquake killed hundreds.

The provincial government asked Foggin, whose NGO has operated in Yushu for nearly a decade and opened 11 village clinics in the area, to send help from Xining as quickly as possible. His organization has organized a website for donations (http://yushuearthquakerelief.com) and is dispatching teams to the disaster zone. “Basic supplies are in need, accommodation is in need, and of course there’s the medical situation,” he says. On Thursday afternoon Plateau Perspectives sent five people, including two doctors, overland to Yushu from Xining. With luck, they will make it by morning.

Marc Foggin [is] chief representative of Plateau Perspectives, an NGO in Qinghai’s provincial capital Xining that focuses on sustainable development in China’s mountainous west.