Pune lends a hand to Nepal: ‘People back on their feet, handling it with dignity’

“The people of Nepal are back on their feet and what is admirable is the way in which they handled the disaster with such dignity,” says Dr Pushkar Bhide – among the first orthopaedic doctors from Pune, who rushed to Kathmandu after a massive quake hit the Himalayan region on April 25. While Bhide returned after an 11-day stay, another team of doctors led by cardiologist Dr Abhijit Vaidya provided aid to the worst affected Dholka district.

“I had just appeared for my last exam for an MS degree in orthopaedics from Chennai when the quake occurred. My mother, who was in Nepal at the time, described the sheer frenzy and panic among people. There were desperate calls for orthopaedics. I knew I had to go,” Bhide told Pune Newsline.

The team of eight people from Himalayan disaster and relief organisation, including Bhide, soon realised that medical care was needed in remote villages and this resident orthopaedic doctor was among the first such doctors to reach remote areas and provide aid. “The people there are amazing. They have already started rebuilding their lives. At one place, near the mountain top, we attended a call to treat a small child and were surprised to see that some of them had started potato farming,” Bhide recalled.

Bhide, who returned to Chennai on May 12, said a majority of the survivors had blunt injuries and he was involved in washing a lot of wounds. “We helped evacuate several people, including a pregnant woman who had a premature delivery, where she lost her baby,” Bhide said.

For the other team of doctors and non medicos at Aarogya Sena led by cardiologist Dr Vaidya, it was important to reach out to people in the worst-affected districts. Vaidya, along with Dr Nitin Ketkar, Laxmikant Mundada, Ashish Azgaonkar and Prof Pramod Dalvi, went to Sankhu town, which was severely damaged by the quake.
“Houses are in shambles. Barring minor fractures and wounds, we treated a lot of cases of fever, body ache and diarrhoea,” Vaidya said.

The team, which also felt tremors while visiting villages in Dholka district, however, were impressed by the manner in which the Nepalese Army  reached the remotest corner and distributed relief material. “We had carried medicines worth Rs 4 lakh and they helped distribute it,” the team members said. Even as the situation is still quite bad, Vaidya said people were extremely composed.

Source – Indian Express