Domestic and international emergency response teams are racing against time and odds to rush in vital medical aid to people in the worst-affected areas of quake-hit Nepal, including flying in mobile clinics to far-flung villages and providing psychological support to traumatised victims of the tragedy.
Global humanitarian institutions - International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF), besides other NGOs, are providing the vital human link and compassionate touch amid the chaos, pain, paranoia and panic.
MSF has hired two helicopters from Nepal to run mobile clinic service in far-flung areas, the Geneva-based aid agency today also started setting up an "inflatable hospital" in Arughat village.
"We are currently trying to rush in medical aid to four of the worst-affected districts - Sindhupalchowk, Rasuwa, Gorkha and Dhading. For mobile clinics, we fly in to remote areas and then set up the entire clinic inside the chopper, where we give people first aid or evacuate persons who are seriously injured, as the case may be," Deputy Emergency Coordinator, MSF, Magali Roudaut told PTI.
She said, the team yesterday visited villages in Sindhupalchowk, the district which has so far recorded the highest casualties (over 2,000) in the country and where houses have been brutally levelled by the temblor, which shook the core of the Himalayan nation that fateful day.
A mobile clinic has a doctor, nurse, water, medicine and sanitation material, besides, other essential supplies, the MSF said.
"Mobile clinics were conducted in over 9 village in the districts of Sindhupalchowk, Rasuwa, Dhading and Gorkha. Teams also distributed food and blankets in some of the worst affected-villages. MSF's inflatable hospital will be set up at Arughat by tomorrow. Apart from this, one team in Gorkha continues to distribute shelter kits and hygiene kits to the affected," a senior official of MSF India said.
"A surgical team (surgeon, anaesthetist, nurse) is continuing to support the hospital in Bhaktapur. They have managed five major surgeries so far," the official added.
While the MSF team could reach the needy people in a helicopter, a team from IFRC was stuck in hilly terrain in Dolalghat area in Kavre district, just before entering neighbouring Sindhupalchowk, due to a fresh landslide yesterday.
