Nepal Needs Oxygen: Emergency Appeal
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*** Please see UPDATE lower down page ***
As western nations rapidly deploy vaccination programmes to combat Covid-19, please take a moment to help those left behind.
As western nations rapidly deploy vaccination programmes to combat Covid-19, please take a moment to help those left behind.
Nepal is one of the least developed and poorest countries in the world. It is currently facing a devastating second wave of Covid-19. Nepali health officials report that the current daily positivity rate is nearly 50% (one in two people testing positive for Covid). Daily infections have rapidly risen from around 150 at the beginning of April to an excess of 9,000 just a month later (in a country of apr. 29 million). Nepal depends upon India for most of its medical supplies, but India is currently enduring its own Covid emergency. The country's vaccine supply has currently run out.
The Barabardiya Municipality in Bardiya District, Lumbini (midwestern Nepal) is one of the worst affected areas of Nepal. As a rural area in which 95% of the population depends upon subsistence agriculture, it has not received the same level of charitable support as better-connected urban areas. The municipality's only hospital, RC Tharu Memorial City Hospital, serves a population of 68,000 (2011), and has been allocated as the only Covid treatment centre for the wider Bardiya District with a population of 382,649 (2011). It has insufficient medical equipment and oxygen to treat its current patients, and the number of cases is rapidly rising. People are dying untreated.
The biggest difference we can make right now is to fund oxygen concentrators. While oxygen cylinders contain a finite oxygen supply, a concentrator can continually recycle oxygen from the air and deliver it directly to the patient. We are fundraising to buy two high-flow oxygen concentrators (needed for the most seriously ill patients) for RC Tharu Memorial Hospital.
Thank you so much for your support which will save lives.
N.B. I have set up this crowd-funding page on behalf of my dear friend Tirtha Poudel (PHF), who as Assistant Governor of the Rotary International District 3292 Nepal/Bhutan (2021/22), has been asked by Municipal Internal Sources (which manages Tharu Memorial Hospital) to oversee fundraising for the vital medical equipment needed to manage the Covid emergency.
Tirtha has a long track record of managing and co-ordinating NGO development projects in Bardiya and more widely across Nepal (since 1995). He is currently serving as Chartered President of the well-respected Optimist Club of Dang. He has led and served JCI Nepal for 25 years in different capacities, including as Chapter President of Tribhuwannagar Jaycees (2005) and National Executive Vice President (2007), earning senator recognition. During his tenure he has trained thousands of young people in leadership and communication skills. He also founded Youth Initiative Nepal (2001), and as Secretary General he oversaw the building of 30 deep-water wells in communities across rural Dang. I first met Tirtha when I worked alongside him on a sustainable development community project for Restless Development NGO (then Students Partnership Worldwide) in Eastern Nepal in 2001/2.
Media links:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-57055209
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/mass-coronavirus-graves-nepal-indias-second-wave-spreads-beyond/
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/nepal-covid-cases/109970/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/commentisfree/2021/may/11/nepal-says-its-covid-response-is-under-control-everyone-can-see-its-not-true
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/06/nepal-facing-human-catastrophe-similar-to-india-amid-rampant-covid-surge
Organizer
Anna Jones
Organizer
England
