DOHA: Qatar’s Red Crescent is setting up a field hospital this morning in one of Nepal’s most difficult terrains, which remain hit by Saturday’s devastating tremor and where the death toll has so far been close to 500 in Nuwakot district.
Nuwakot district, where the Qatari Red Crescent team is about to reach earlier today, has also been battling challenging weather since last Saturday.
According to Nepali media reports, the place has been witnessing rains, thunderstorm and massive landslides and the last aftershock, an estimated 44th, it felt was on late Monday afternoon.
While help has yet to arrive here, a team of Qatar’s Red Crescent will become the first relief operation from an Arab country to arrive in Nepal and set up a field hospital here. The Red Crescent team arrived at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport yesterday with adequate paraphernalia to set up a make-shift field hospital.
The paraphernalia consists of tents, beds, medicines and medical equipment. Emergency medicine stocks with the Red Crescent can last 30 days.
The field hospital can cater to 300 patients a day and will have enough staff. It can treat some 9,000 patients in a month.
The team members of the Red Crescent flew in a Qatar Airways’ cargo plane with the paraphernalia. They also carried with them tents and medicines and other relief materials to be distributed to the quake-hit.
Nuwakot is on an hour’s drive from Kathmandu. The Red Crescent team will look for a suitable site to set up the field hospital. The official death toll here is 478 and thousands of people remain injured and in need of emergency medical care.
Another team from the Red Crescent will visit Bhaktapur district in Kathmandu Valley, which is two hours’ journey from Kathmandu to install a water purifier unit.
The Red Crescent team is carrying the unit with it. It can supply purified (sterilised) water to some 5,000 families a day.
There is an acute shortage of drinking water in the quake affected areas in Nepal as civic water supply tanks have either developed cracks or remain destroyed.
Meanwhile, in Qatar, people desirous of making donations for quake relief in Nepal can send SMS to Ooredoo. For QR50 they can SMS “L” to 92176, for QR100, SMS “L” to 92766 and for QR500, SMS “L” to 92700.
The Peninsula
DOHA: Workers from a labour camp in the Industrial Area pooled in money from their meagre income to help a Nepali co-worker fly home as he lost his whole family in the earthquake.
Rajesh, 35, lost his wife, two small children and both of his parents and a paternal uncle when his house in his village in Kathmandu district caved in around Saturday noon after a powerful tremor hit Nepal.
The poor Nepali construction worker was numbed when he learnt of the tragedy and struggled for two days to get his passport from the company and salary arrears, his co-workers said.
“Rajesh could eventually fly to Kathmandu by Flydubai yesterday after we collected some funds from among us. He could get only QR600 from his company and that was not sufficient for him to travel,” a co-worker said.
Rajesh lived in a labour camp on Street 39 of the Industrial Area which is shared by two construction companies that are working on a single site. Hundreds of workers, many of them Nepali, live in this camp. “We pooled in around QR1,400 and handed the money to Rajesh. He had to take a taxi to the airport. The company didn’t even provide him transport in such a situation of extreme personal crisis,” the co-worker claimed in remarks to The Peninsula. Rajesh, he claimed, managed to get exit permit from his company only yesterday. The company couldn’t be immediately contacted for comment.
Mohamed Nasrul Mian, another Nepali living in the same camp, said his wife was injured in the quake and he was waiting to collect his salary, passport and exit permit from his company so he could travel home. He said his village was at 30 minutes’ drive from Kathmandu and his wife was injured when the outer wall of his house fell. “I am going to leave at any cost. The company must give me my salary, passport and exit permit,” said Mian.
The Peninsula
