Rocking and pounding for hours along a rubble-strewn road that looks more like a mountain goat trail, the Canadian Red Cross mobile medical team is on the move. Four times a week, a doctor, nurse and translator with the Canadian field hospital in Dhunche, Nepal, load heavy metal trunks filled with medical supplies and travel to surrounding villages along earthquake-ravaged roads.
English Blog Categories 153
Latest Posts
Dash Bare Sagar arrived in a Dadaab refugee camp in 2011 following continued clashes in his home area of Jilib, Somalia, which left his uncle dead. He managed to escape with his mother, wife, as well as five children (two from his deceased uncle) and travelled to Kenya where he became a community leader in his camp and a Kenya Red Cross volunteer.
In a half-constructed classroom open to the sky, about 65 Nepalese students laugh, wave their arms and carefully mimic the gestures of a young woman in a Red Cross and Red Crescent vest.
On a misty, pre-monsoon morning at the Canadian Red Cross field hospital, a colourful line-up is forming of elderly Nepalese women in traditional embroideries and heavy brass earrings, crying children, and a few proud, wiry men.
Tucked in her mother’s lap, two-year-old Sandya Tamang watches other children build blocks, count wooden beads, and tussle over stuffed toys.
It’s Sandya’s first day at the play space created by the Canadian Red Cross for children affected by the Nepal earthquakes.
Shortly before her first child was due, Diki Dolma trekked for days across mountain trails devastated by the Nepal earthquakes to reach the Canadian Red Cross field hospital in Dhunche.
After almost two weeks away from her family, Kadiatu’s Ebola tests came back negative and she was allowed to return home where she was reunited with her family; everyone that is, except for her father, whose fate is still unknown. Like many families in Sierra Leone, the loss of the family breadwinner is having a profound impact on the family. Kadiatu recalls her experience and her hopes for the future.
Fortunately, the roads reopened within a week of the earthquake and we were able to begin transporting supplies by truck. The team moved quickly to set up camp, assist the local medical staff with their workload and begin mobile clinics on foot to reach otherwise inaccessible communities around Dhunche.