Relief efforts for the April 25 earthquake in Nepal are ramping up at UNMC and Nebraska Medicine.
What you can do
Donate funds: Donate directly at the University of Nebraska Foundation or UNMC’s Nepal Relief page. For questions, contact Karen Levin of the University of Nebraska Foundation at 402-502-4921.
On Monday, a mix of employees, faculty and students from UNMC, Nebraska Medicine and the University of Nebraska at Omaha came together to plot their next steps in the relief efforts.
Ward Chambers, M.D., coordinator of the UNMC/Nebraska Medicine Nepal Relief Effort 2015, said, “We are now 12 days out from the earthquake. Our relief team is in place, and things are starting to come together.”
Five key areas have been identified for the relief effort headed by the following individuals/departments:
- Counseling services – David Carver, Ph.D., director, student counseling;
- Money donations – Karen Levin, director of development – UNMC, University of Nebraska Foundation;
- Communications – UNMC Public Relations;
- Supplies – Deb Thomas, associate vice chancellor, business and finance at UNMC; Shelly Schwedhelm, director of emergency department, trauma and emergency preparedness at Nebraska Medicine;
- Volunteers going to Nepal – Alison Freifeld, M.D., professor, internal medicine-infectious diseases.
“The international agencies are advising that there already are more than enough relief workers in Nepal,” Dr. Chambers said. “Our response will be a secondary one. We’re going to be part of the second relief wave, and we’ll focus on trying to rebuild the health infrastructure and public health system in Nepal.”
By the end of the week, Dr. Chambers, who is executive director of international health and medical education for UNMC and a professor in the College of Public Health, said the group hopes to identify a disaster relief organization with which UNMC/Nebraska Medicine can partner.
“We have to figure out what we are good at…what’s our niche,” he said.
More than 60 donors have made contributions totaling nearly $9,000 to the special fund established at the University of Nebraska Foundation for Nepal relief efforts. Donations will go directly to Nepal, Dr. Chambers said, not to an organization.
“We hope others will continue to make donations,” Levin said. “If you remember the Haiti earthquake of 2010, many departments and centers did their own fundraising events. We would love the same thing to happen with Nepal.”
In preparation for future global disasters, Dr. Chambers said UNMC and Nebraska Medicine hope to create a core group of people in the five key areas identified above, and this group can begin relief efforts instantaneously rather than take several days to come together.
In addition, the group hopes to create a system in which basic medical supplies with a long shelf life would be pre-packaged and be ready to ship over to countries going through a disaster.