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Lausanne, Switzerland. April 22, 2016 - As the people of Nepal commemorate the one year anniversary of the Gorkha earthquake, the humanitarian organisation Medair is urging the international community to continue supporting recovery efforts in the Himalayan country.
April 25th 2016 marks one year since Nepal was struck by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake which resulted in the deaths of more than 8,600 people. The Gorkha earthquake, and the 7.3 magnitude aftershock which occurred three weeks later, were the deadliest disasters in Nepal’s recorded history. One year on, and earthquake survivors are still struggling to recover.
“We are working in village communities where up to 98% of houses were destroyed,” said Heidi Cockram, Medair’s Country Director in Nepal. “Families have been living in makeshift or temporary shelters since the earthquake, and have already endured a monsoon season and an extremely cold winter. We would love to see these families in proper shelters by the end of the year so they don’t have to go through another freezing winter.”
Medair has run a wide range of humanitarian projects in Nepal over the past year, including providing emergency shelter kits to 7,700 displaced families who lost their homes. A recently completed cash for work programme employed 2,000 earthquake victims to clear away debris and salvage usable materials from fallen buildings.
Medair is now training local masons in improved building techniques so they can build homes with greater resilience to future earthquakes. Ms Cockram says the people of Nepal are eager to begin rebuilding, and are determined to move ahead with their lives.
“Over the past year we have witnessed incredible fortitude amongst those who were impacted by the earthquake,” says Ms Cockram. “They have to be tough to cope with their present situation, living in such inadequate shelters. People have worked so hard to clear away rubble and get prepared to rebuild the homes which they lost. They are hopeful that rebuilding can start soon. As an international community we need to continue standing with the Nepalese people at this critical time so that they can make a full recovery.” Our current efforts in Nepal are supported bySwiss Solidarity (CH), EO Metterdaad (NL), TEAR NL, Woord en Daad (NL), Redeen Kind (NL), and Dep. Bijzondere Noden (NL)
For Media:
For more information on our programmes, please contact: Nath Fauveau, Press Relations (French, English, German) at Headquarters,
nathalie.fauveau@medair.org +41 (0)21 694 84 72 or +41 (0)78 635 30 95.
For interview requests from Nepal, please contact: Andrew Robinson, Communications Officer (English), comms-asia@medair.org.
