Dr. Pargat Singh Bhurji, a well-known pediatrician and neonatologist in Surrey, Canada, will be going to Nepal on May 7 to help out victims injured due to the earthquake on April 25.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal killed more than 7,000 people and injured more than twice as many. It was the most powerful disaster to strike Nepal since the 1934 Nepal-Bihar earthquake.
Dr. Bhurji will be in the city of Pokhara, which is near Kathmandu, for three to four weeks providing aid to children, new born babies and assisting in deliveries.
“There are about 300,000 thousand pregnant women living in tents in Nepal as their homes are destroyed,” reveals Dr. Bhurji, adding, “The monsoons will be arriving soon, so they need health care urgently.”
Dr. Bhurji’s is going as a volunteer through the Vancouver-based charity, Rose Charities, which is associated with the Association of Medical Doctors of Asia (AMDA). Rose Charities is a non-profit organization which aims to make a difference to world poverty, whereas AMDA provides emergency medical aid to people affected by natural as well as man-made disasters.
“My goal as a medical person is to serve - even if it’s just one life to save, rather than sitting in a third world country and enjoying the luxuries,” says the passionate Dr. Bhurji, who is the first physician from British Columbia to go to Nepal to help out the people there.
This is Dr. Bhurji’s third mission. His first mission was in 2005 in Kalmunai in Sri Lanka which was directly impacted by the 2004 Tsunami. His second mission was in Haiti, where he was the first physician from western Canada to help those injured by the 2010 earthquake.
