WEEKLY PROGRAM - NEPAL'S EARTHQUAKE DISASTER

Infant mortality is high, respiratory and intestinal diseases are endemic, and malnutrition is widespread in a country where life expectancy is fifty-seven years. Contributing to this situation are poverty, poor hygiene, and lack of health care. There are hospitals only in urban areas, and they are poorly equipped and unhygienic. Rural health clinics often lack personnel, equipment, and medicines. Western biomedical practices have social prestige, but many poor people cannot afford this type of health care. Many people consult shamans and other religious practitioners. Others look to Ayurvedic medicine, in which illness is thought to be caused by imbalances in the bodily humors. Treatment involves correcting these imbalances, principally through diet. Nepalis combine Ayurvedic, shamanic, biomedical, and other systems.

Although health conditions are poor, malaria has been eradicated. Development efforts have focused on immunization, birth control, and basic medical care. However, the success of all such projects seems to correlate with the education levels of women, which are extremely low.

 

The devastating human toll of the Nepal earthquake has been well documented, but the quake also wreaked havoc on many animals, which will make the return to normalcy for people that much harder.
In rural Nepal, domestic animals are traditionally kept below the house, which means many were killed when their homes collapsed. So many rural survivors of the quake are now without a primary source of food and income.  Many of the animal survivors, including pets, are left with no one to care for them. They're in need of the same assistance as humans: food, water, and shelter.

Humane Society International has dispatched a rescue team to provide emergency veterinary aid and care for the earthquake's animal survivors, including  baby goats, cows, and dogs.  The society and other relief organizations, such as the Animal Welfare Network of Nepal in Kathmandu, are working to provide the basic necessities to both people in Nepal and to their livestock and pets.  Their work also benefits the human survivors, many of whom have a close emotional bond with their furry companions and would go to great lengths to save them.  "People are willing to put their own lives at risk to stay with their companion animals," said Joann Lindenmayer, senior manager of disaster operations at Humane Society International. "They're family members."

 

Analysis: Richard Galpin, BBC News, Kathmandu
At the moment the Nepalese government is refusing to officially announce that there will be no more climbing on Everest this year.
It knows it would be an unprecedented move because it would be the second year in a row.  Closing the mountain could have implications for the country's vital tourism industry of which mountaineering and trekking are major parts.
Those climbers who had wanted to continue their Everest expeditions will be frustrated, while many of the teams will want their permits carried over to next year, which will mean a loss of revenue for the government.  A senior official had also told the BBC earlier that they wanted to normalize the situation in the country as quickly as possible after the earthquake to minimize the damage to the tourism industry.
The government appears to be leaving the decision about scaling Everest to individual climbers - 357 were registered for this climbing season.

The government says much of the rescue work after the quake is over, and the remaining operations can be handled mostly by local teams.
But it says that it will require huge international support for reconstruction and rehabilitation.  More than 4,000 aid workers from around the world have been helping with relief and rescue operations.

 

“NASA technology plays many roles: driving exploration, protecting the lives of our astronauts and improving—even saving—the lives of people on Earth,” David Miller, NASA’s chief technologist, said in a press statement. “FINDER exemplifies how technology designed for space exploration has profound impacts to life on Earth.”  A technology developed by NASA and the US Department of Homeland Security designed to save people trapped by debris in natural disasters has been used in the field for the first time. FINDER (Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response) lived up to its name, locating and saving four people trapped under rubble for days after the 7.8 earthquake in Nepal.  FINDER is a radar machine that sends a continuous microwave signal through the rubble, and can detect a human’s breathing or heartbeat (and distinguish it from the movement of an animal). It can locate people hidden behind 20 feet of solid concrete or buried beneath 30 feet of rubble, and the person doesn’t need to be conscious to be detected. It was deployed with search and rescue teams to Nepal on April 29, four days after the earthquake struck. It had been tested many times before, but had yet to be implemented in a real-life emergency.