A medical team from Tianjin traveled to Qinghai, screened 480 local children and identified 24 who were eligible for surgery. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

One notable patient is 1-year-old Tashi Tsho from Huangnan Tibetan autonomous prefecture. Her sister received successful free life-saving heart surgery at the same Tianjin hospital back in 2024, and now the younger girl follows in her footsteps.

For more than two decades, TICH has carried out 29 screening missions in Qinghai. It has conducted cardiac checks on some 14,600 local children and treated nearly 2,600 young heart-disease patients from the Tibetan Plateau.

Since 2004, in cooperation with civil-affairs authorities, charity groups and enterprises, the hospital has run about a dozen charity medical programs. It has offered life-saving treatment to 17,000 vulnerable children of 35 ethnic groups across 28 provincial-level regions nationwide. The hospital was honored as a National Advanced Group in Poverty Alleviation in 2021.