Our staff formed several first response teams to reach the districts of Dhading and Sindhupalchok, organizing medical camps and carrying antibiotics, bandages, sutures, food, and other emergency supplies to the most remote areas by vehicle and by foot. We hired additional local medical personnel to join these response teams. Thousands benefited from the supplies and aid. We formed strong partnerships with the emergency response NGOs AmeriCares and Direct Relief to coordinate relief efforts and transport emergency supplies more effectively.
Our CEO arrived with an emergency obstetric team and over one ton of donated supplies and food, including medicine, water purifiers, tents, fetal dopplers, and We Care Solar suitcases (to provide solar power in the birthing tents).
Our Kathmandu team began working with more foreign aid groups and the Nepali government to coordinate efforts in weekly planning meetings. We continued to deliver loads of supplies to both districts and conducted needs assessments of the damaged clinics and birthing centers to form a plan to ensure that communities had access to necessary care. Because most of the clinics and birthing centers were destroyed in these districts, the urgent need for health centers was apparent. We made it a top priority to install fully furnished, staffed, and equipped birthing tents in these two districts and arranged for the first twenty Tifie Humanitarian tents to be shipped to Nepal.
The team was in the process of setting up our first birthing tent when the 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit. Shortly after, two women in labor approached the team for help and we brought them to the Kathmandu hospital where they delivered healthy babies. Six more babies were delivered by our team in the new tent and eighty pregnant women were examined. Nine more of our tents were installed in Sindhupalchok and Dhading. We hired a Nepali American NGO consultant to help our team develop a long-term strategic plan to respond and rebuild.
We installed the last ten tents in Sindhupalchok and Dhading, with a total of twenty now in place for deliveries and examinations. Santa Monica pediatrician Dr. Jay Gordon arrived in Dhading and has been seeing patients. Our staff continues to participate in country-wide planning meetings and deploy supplies to rural communities. We are forming a plan to guide our work for the next 6 months and address the gap in health services, family planning, and maternal and newborn care. To date, we have distributed one million dollars of medical supplies donated from Direct Relief.