THE Flight CZ6820 was being guided down the runway April 30 at the Hotan Airport in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to prepare for its departure.

It was then stopped by the request of a father who rushed to send his 7-year-old son with a badly damaged arm to a hospital in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang.

The Uygur boy required surgery within eight hours to save his arm. In a race against time, crew members and passengers, police, medical workers and many other people joined in to help.

“Without their support, my nephew would have lost his right arm,” said Abudulmajit Emin, the boy’s uncle.

“His right arm was smashed by the gear of a running tractor. Blood was pouring out of the wounds,” Abudulmajit said.

They instantly called an ambulance to send him to Hotan Prefecture People’s Hospital.

After an orthopedists examined his arm, they suggested that as the injury was so severe that the arm would need to be severed and then reattached to properly align the bone fragments, otherwise the child would be disabled for life.

They decided to transfer him to the affiliated TCM hospital of Xinjiang Medical University in Urumqi, 1,400 kilometers from Hotan prefecture. After the boy’s wounds were treated preliminarily, he was sent to the Hotan airport to catch a flight to Urumqi.

As they arrived at the airport at around 11:40 p.m., they were informed that the last flight to Urumqi that day was about to take off.

“We asked the airport staff to hold back the plane to save the child. The airport officials promised that they would try their best to help us,” recalled Abudulmajit.

Soon, the plane stopped, returned to the parking bay and opened its cabin door for the boy to board.

Zhao Yan, the flight’s chief steward, said that as the doctors told her that the boy shouldn’t fall asleep throughout the journey, she kept the boy awake by playing music.

“During the flight, some passengers also helped to take care of the boy,” she recalled.

It was at 2:10 a.m. Saturday when the boy finally arrived at the affiliated TCM hospital of Xinjiang Medical University.

The hospital prioritized his case and organized more than 20 doctors and nurses from departments including blood transfusion, orthopedics, emergency and anesthesiology, according to Li Li, an orthopedist at the hospital.

The surgery lasted for more than three hours and was successful.

(China Daily)