On the night of May 12, the same night a severe aftershock hit the nation, 49 members of the Henry Reeve International Contingent Specialized in Disasters and Large Epidemics Brigade No.41 arrived in Katmandu.

“The landscape was disheartening, Dantesque, I would say. The country didn’t need nature to punish it this way. Those who managed to save their lives in the most affected areas have lost practically everything, including their most cherished loved ones,” Dr. Luis Orlando Oliveros Serrano, head of the Brigade, told Granma.

The day after setting foot in Nepal, the Cuban medical brigade moved quickly to the area occupied by the National Center for the Study of Ayurvedic Medicine, as directed by the country’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization, in accordance with plans made by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ advance team.

The brigade immediately set up a field hospital, which Dr. Oliveros described, “This center adjacent to a hospital has a capacity of 20 beds and excellent anti-seismic properties. We have installed all the equipment we brought from Cuba. Since the 18th, we have been offering all of the services for which the brigade is prepared: an operating room, an intensive care ward, x-rays, ultra-sound, a laboratory, sterilization facilities, a pharmacy, rehabilitation and out-patient consultations.”

Additionally, he reported, the brigade is offering primary care in areas severely damaged around Katmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur, with teams of comprehensive family doctors and specialists traveling to communities where they have treated more than 2,000 patients.

While tragedy continues to walk the streets in, hope is also present, in many cases in the form of a white coat. Dr. Oliberos comments, “Everyday we very humbly receive de monstrations of gratitude, as shown by the very behavior of our brigade.”

(Granma)

The state-run news agency WAM quoted sources saying that the field hospital arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, last Thursday, to provide assistance to the victims of the earthquakes on April 25 and May 11.

A multidisciplinary team of doctors from the UAM discussed with officials at Kathmandu University Hospital the work of the field hospital, and set the trained staff to provide assistance to the highest number of victims as possible, reported WAM.

According to official figures, about 110 Nepalese lost their lives and 2,763 were injured in the last 7.3 magnitude earthquake reported last Monday. Those figures were added to 8,199 deaths and 17,867 injured in the first and dealiest earth tremor (7.8 degrees).

Doctor Adil Al Shamri, who leads the UAE medical team to Nepal, said that the field hospital is equipped to provide assistance to victims in serious health conditions, and it is staffed by experts trained in intensive care, family medicine and children’s assistance, among other specialties.

The first earthquake that hit Nepal destroyed more than 300,000 houses and local sources predicted the possibility of more financial contributions to support the reconstruction efforts.

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The latest report from the Ministry of Interior said that the huge tremor-the April 25 marked 7.9 degrees on the Richter scale; the day before yesterday, 7,3- caused about 19 thousand wounded and multibillion-dollar losses in buildings, roads and other infrastructure.

Rescuers from the army and police, as well as other countries, now intensify the search in the districts most affected by the jolt on Tuesday, especially in Dolakha (130 kilometers northeast of Kathmandu), where he located the epicenter and the dead are almost half of the total.

Narrated field teams to local television that the tasks of search, rescue and delivery of food, water, medicine and material assistance of various kinds is hampered by landslides that block roads and roads in a region always inaccessible by the mountain.

Despite its magnitude, the quake was listed antier by geologists as an aftershock on April 25. Clearly perceptible tremors since then pass 240, for an average of more than 13 replicas per day.

Categorizations aside, what most worries the Nepalese is that earthquakes of the past three weeks are signs of an ancient and persistent process of readjustment of the crust that can still bring new aftershocks of incalculable consequences.

(Prensa Latina)

A spokesman for the local police, Kamal Singh Bam, said four of those killed residing in the town of Chautara, Sindhupalchowk district, the same where the previous tremor left nearly a third of all victims it caused.

The other three were residents of Kathmandu, the capital, where there was disruption of services fixed and mobile telephony, electricity and Internet.

The authorities do not rule out an increase in the balance of fatal quake, whose magnitude was set at 7.4 by the US Geological Survey and 7.3 by the Seismological Center of Nepal.

Its epicenter was located north-east of Kathmandu, on a point close to Everest, the highest mountain in the world with eight thousand 848 meters above the sea.

Seismographs also detected six replicates in quick succession, the eldest, very intense, of 6.3 degrees.

Reports Nepalese TV channels and radio stations described scenes of terror in Kathmandu, with people out into the streets in panic for fear of collapsing homes, offices or buildings where they were.

The jolt on Tuesday also clearly felt in northern and eastern India, and Bangladesh (southeastern Nepal).

Experts believe that the crust has not even gotten a temporary accommodation after the earthquake of April 25 and that are predictable new movements of varying intensity.

In the days since the Seismological Center of Nepal it has recorded more than 160 aftershocks.

(Prensa Latina)

“We in no way want a lack of resources to force us to limit the assistance were providing,” Richard Ragan, who is coordinating WFP relief operation, said from Kathmandu.

After the initial focus in the relief effort on search and rescue, food has become an increasingly urgent need, WFP said.

Thus far, the Programme has distributed food for 300,000 people and is bringing in more helicopters and engaging multiple fleets of small trucks to get supplies to hard-hit rural areas. It is also opening a land route from India to take pressure off Kathmandu airport.

But WFP emergency operations are only four per cent funded, with much of the food distributions and common services provided to date enabled by internal resources which are reaching their limit.

Funded entirely by voluntary contributions from governments, companies and private individuals, WFP has appealed for $116.5 million to provide food for 1.4 million people over the next three months. It is vital that the response from the international community matches the immense needs of the people of Nepal.

On 25 April, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook Nepal, killing thousands while limiting access to food and leaving some 3.5 million in need of food assistance.

(Prensa Latina)

The group, composed of 49 professionals, including 25 doctors of various specialties, was ready in short time, according to a report released in the Granma newspaper.

Marcia Cobas, deputy minister of the Ministry of Public Health, said that in 24 hours they were ready specialists and equipment.

Cobas noted that the brigade carries to Nepal a field hospital that includes services of a surgical unit, sterilization, intensive care unit, possible diagnoses (including x-ray, laboratory semi-automated ultrasound) as well as areas for consultation and rehabilitation services, one of the most important efforts to make in the coming days.

She stressed that according to reports issued by officials from the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry located in China for organizing the arrival of the brigade, there is great expectation in the population of Nepal by the arrival of the Cuban hospital.

(Prensa Latina)

According to Interior Minister Spokesperson Laxmi Prasad Dhakal, the number of people injured exceeds the 14 thousand as the chances of finding survivors after the 7.8 earthquake are slim.

The number of victims is likely to rise even more when rescue workers reach the most remote areas in the next hours, the source added.

Meanwhile, the UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF) warned about the need to clean up several areas to avoid disease outbreaks among the 1.7 million children and teenagers that live in the areas affected by the earthquake.

The Government estimates that about 8 million out of a 30 million population were affected by the earthquake.

(Prensa Latina)

At a meeting with ambassadors from neighboring India and China and the United States, the head of government expressed fears that the earthquake’s victims might exceed those killed by the 1934 earth tremor, which killed 8,000 people.

Although rescue works are still under way under the debris, authorities have provisionally estimated the number of deaths at 4,347 and more than 7,500 injured, most of whom are in critical conditions.

However, the number of deaths due to the earthquake might increase because hospitals are overloaded and lack medical materials and blood. Some hospitals are having problems to discard wastes.

In addition, unhealthy conditions exist as a result of a natural disaster of such magnitude. In Kathmandu, there is shortage of drinking water and women and children stand on line in several neighborhoods to collect water in plastic buckets.

There are zones where food and staples are running out, and some hospitals in the capital and in the rest of the country have reported unusual cases of diarrhea.

(Prensa Latina)

The 7.9 magnitude quake struck at midday on Saturday at a busy time of year for the tourism reliant country’s trekking and climbing season, with an estimated 300,000 foreign tourists in the country, home to many World Heritage sites.

Nepalese Rescuers dug with their bare hands and bodies piled up in Nepal today after an earthquake devastated the heavily crowded Kathmandu Valley, killing more than 2,000 people,figure that could increase.

A big aftershock between Kathmandu and Everest unleashed more avalanches in the Himalayas. In the capital, hospital workers stretchered patients out onto the street to treat them as it was too dangerous to keep them indoors.

The tremor, measured at 6.7, was the most powerful since Saturday’s 7.9 quake, itself the strongest since Nepal’s worst earthquake disaster of 1934 that killed 8,500 people.

The aftershock rocked buildings in the Indian capital New Delhi and halted the city metro.

In Everest’s worst disaster, the bodies of 17 climbers were recovered from the mountain today after being caught in avalanches. A plane carrying the first 15 injured climbers landed in Kathmandu at around noon local time.

With Nepal’s government overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster, India flew in medical supplies and relief crews, while China sent in a 60-strong emergency team.

Relief agencies said hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley were overflowing and running out of medical supplies.

Among the capital’s landmarks destroyed in the earthquake was the 60-metre (200-foot) Dharahara Tower, built in 1832 for the queen of Nepal, with a viewing balcony that had been open to visitors for the last 10 years.

Some buildings in Kathmandu toppled like houses of cards, others leaned at precarious angles, and partial collapses exposed living rooms and furniture in place and belongings stacked on shelves.

Thousands of people spent the night outside in chilly temperatures and patchy rain, too afraid to return to their damaged homes.

On Sunday, survivors wandered the streets clutching bed rolls and blankets, while others sat in the street cradling their children, surrounded by a few plastic bags of belongings.

More than 700 were killed in the capital, a city of about 1 million people where many homes are old, poorly built and packed close together.

The main earthquake, centred 50 miles (80 km) east of the second city, Pokhara, was all the more destructive for being shallow.

 (Prensa Latina)