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Lady Doctor from Nepal to Help Katrina victims

by Medindia Content Team on Sep 9 2005 7:37 PM

Dr Luanne Freer normally treats mountaineers caught in avalanches and slipped in crevasses. She heads the Everest Base Camp Medical Clinic in Nepal, has now offered to cope with a new emergency - the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the US.

Freer left for Louisiana on Thursday, one of the worst-affected American coastal towns with about one million displaced by the storm that killed thousands.

She will set up an emergency clinic in the Baton Rouge area to treat around 8,000 labourers who have been brought in by the government to rebuild the destroyed area, Explorers Web reported.

Freer, whose normal area of operations is the clinic located at a height of 5,500 m, is a graduate from the George Washington University and president of the Wilderness Medicine Association. She is a veteran volunteer with Himalayan Rescue Association, a non-profit Nepali NGO.

In 2003, when the world celebrated the golden jubilee of the first ascent of Mt Everest, the highest mountain in the world and Nepal's pride, the association started the Everest Base Camp Medical Clinic to treat high-altitude trekkers and mountaineers.

The base camp clinic is the sequel to an initiative started in 1973 when the association started clinics in Manang and Pheriche in northern Nepal. The clinics provide free or low cost healthcare to the Sherpas of the Khumbhu region.

The gesture comes after the Nepal government pledged $25,000 as assistance for the hurricane victims and called on citizens to chip in.

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(Source: IANS)


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