SA NGO wraps up Nepal mission

Disaster relief organisation Gift of the Givers on Wednesday were packed up and ready to return to South Africa from Nepal.

Disaster relief organisation Gift of the Givers on Wednesday were packed up and ready to return to South Africa from Nepal.

Published May 6, 2015

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Kathmandu - Disaster relief organisation Gift of the Givers on Wednesday were packed up and ready to return to South Africa from Nepal.

“Most of us are finished with what we can do,” said Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of the Gift of the Givers.

“Those with pending surgeries will discuss the completion of their work but we can now use our services back home.”

Gift of the Givers first landed in Nepal four days after the earthquake, the country’s worst in 81 years, struck on April 25.

The second part of the team joined two days later.

Medical practitioners, fire and rescue services, and paramedics from all over South Africa were stationed at a boarding school, Little Angels’ College, in Kathmandu.

With the time spent in Nepal, over 100 surgical operations were done and over 480 patients seen to.

“The team did absolutely brilliantly,” said Sooliman.

“There were so many new members on this mission and it worked exceptionally well.”

The mission to Nepal was also the first time medical and search and rescue teams worked together since the Gift of the Givers’ trip to Haiti in 2010.

The Nepal mission was also the first time medical specialists worked in primary health, honing old skills and developing the new.

Sooliman said the ease with which Gift of the Givers entered Nepal and that they worked in five hospitals, heading seven theatres, demonstrated the high regard for the organisation and successful diplomacy.

Sooliman added that the best part of the mission was interacting with the Nepali people.

“People of Nepal are humble, warm, and hospitable, overwhelmingly so, he said.

On staying with the Gift of the Givers, Kate Ahrends, the South African who was stranded in the mountains after the quake and then rescued, said she was eternally grateful.

“Comfort is what is needed in this country and comfort is what I found in every one of the members of the organisation,” she said.

“Coming here and being welcomed in the way we were was so overwhelming,” said one of the Australian survivors of the quake and Ahrends’ friend, Eliza Arnold.

“You should be so proud to be South African”.

ANA

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