UK Gives $28.8M To Nepal Quake Victims

The U.K. has decided to bring up its aid to the relief effort in calamity hit Nepal to 15 million pounds [$28.8 million]. This has made Britain come at the top in the category of financial donors. The move came after aid agencies launched an appeal for donations on national television.

The aid package will not only comprise more trauma medics, but also contain heavy lifting equipment meant for the movement of supplies at the Kathmandu airport. It also contains an agreement to fund humanitarian experts in water, health and sanitation to help synchronisation of relief effort.

Britain is also deploying a team of Gurkha engineers to assist the relief work in the quake-struck country. They will join many volunteers and emergency service crews from the UK who have already started search-and-rescue operations there. They have with them vital emergency aid, which has over 1100 shelter kits and about 1700 solar lanterns.

As far as tracing Britons who have been stuck in Nepal due to the disaster is concerned, a minimum of 500 Britons have been accounted for, but staff are still trying to contact tour operators and hospitals to trace others, according to Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. Officials had helped over 250 British nationals and 583 "either have left the country or are not in the country or are accounted for and safe in the country," he said.

The British Foreign Office is saying that it is probing reports that the catastrophe claimed the life of one Briton even as Hammond is going to chair a Cobra emergency committee meeting on Wednesday, April 29th. Aid has come pouring in from other nations as well. For instance, India has sent 13 military choppers scanning every nook and corner of the quake hit areas.

However, rescuers have still not reached the higher hilly regions where there are people living with the sky as their only roof. Aid agencies are saying that the eventual death toll is sure to go beyond 10,000, with over 7,000 wounded.“Villages are routinely affected by landslides, and it's not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people, to be completely buried by rock falls,” spokesman for aid agency World Vision, Matt Darvas said.

The writer can be contacted at ritambanati@yahoo.com.