A 17-member medical team — the 15th team from China — took off on Wednesday morning from Chengdu, Sichuan province, and headed for Nepal to provide medical services for a year, according to the Hebei Health Commission.

The team, which is from Hebei, includes experts in various fields, including hematology, neurosurgery, stomach disorders and traditional Chinese medicine.

Since 1999, medical teams have been sent to B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital in Bharatpur in central-southern Nepal, which was built with a grant from the Chinese government in December 1998.

Over the past 25 years, Hebei has sent 265 medical personnel to Nepal.

Lending medical personnel to other countries began in 1973, when a team was dispatched to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since then, 544 medical experts have been sent to the country in central Africa.

Over the past five decades, medical teams from Hebei have treated more than 6 million patients, conducted 150,000 surgeries and helped nurture more than 6,000 medical workers.