Nearly 3,800 injured people are being moved outside quake-hit Sichuan Province for better treatment, an official said on Wednesday.

The patients, mainly suffering from bone injuries, are heading for Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu provinces and Chongqing Municipality, where facilities can offer sufficient medical care, said Li Chengyun, deputy governor of Sichuan.

Prior to this large-scale move, nearly 2,000 injured people had arrived in Shaanxi, Guangdong and Chongqing over the past week, Li said at a press conference.

Five flights, carrying 270 patients from Sichuan, are scheduled to arrive in Guangdong late Wednesday.

"My family and I feel relieved to be able to receive treatment in Guangzhou," said Ran Guiqing, who sustained brain injuries in the catastrophe.

Ran, 59, flew to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, via a chartered flight Tuesday afternoon along with another 30 patients.

About two thirds of the seats on the plane had been dismantled to make more space for them.

"We have set up a team of experienced doctors headed by the president of our hospital for the patients," said Lin Zhixiong, chief doctor with the orthopedics department of the No.1 Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College.

Most of the regions have dispatched chartered flights and trains, and prepared sufficient beds in key hospitals for the arriving and upcoming patients.

Forty hospitals in Hebei Province, northern China, readied 3,000 beds on Wednesday for the arrival of 100 Sichuan patients and more in the days to come.

Various quake-relief efforts have been going on across the country over the past week to help people in Sichuan to survive the disaster.

As of Wednesday at noon, donations for the quake victims had reached 16 billion yuan (2.29 billion U.S. dollars), and 1.764 billion yuan had been forwarded to the affected areas, according to the Information Office of State Council.

(Xinhua News Agency May 22, 2008)