Feature: Nepal-loving Canadian lends valuable voluntary hand to medical teams in quake hit Nepal

Hanna Kabzems first came to Nepal in 1998 with her family. In 2014 she revisited this Himalayan nation with her mother. In 2015 she made it a hat trick but her trip this time with a medical team, the "Canadian Medical Assistance Team" to help the quake-hit people in Nepal.

Hanna is a member of one of the 100 international medical teams who arrived in Nepal to provide medical assistance to the Nepalese. "I have love for the Nepalese like I do for all my family," said this 24-year-old Canadian lady.

A nurse by profession, Hanna first came to know about Nepal's notorious April 25 quake through a text message that her brother sent her at midnight from Canada.

Hanna's brother was in Nepal when the quake hit. He instantly managed to send her a message stating his safe condition along with the description of the chaotic conditions of the capital city Kathmandu and his experiences when the 7.9-magnitude quake rattled various parts of Nepal.

"I immediately called my parents and told them who stay far from me. Neither they nor I could sleep well afterwards," recalled Hanna who has just been back to the capital after providing medical services to the locals of Baluwa VDC in Gorkha from May 3 to 18.

"I did not think twice to apply to a volunteer team that was one of the first responders to Nepal following the quake," said Hanna who was immediately selected as one among the 14 medical team members to go to Nepal.

The team chose to set up its camp in the Gorkha district, the worst affected district with the epicenter of the 7.9-magnitude quake being at Barpak.

"We went there after the recommendation of Doctor Pat who had been in Nepal soon after the quake to assess the medical needs here."

"People would mostly come with bruises on their feet, probably having been buried in the rubble of their destroyed houses or hurt while re-constructing their houses and sustaining partial damages, " Hanna described the harrowing scenes she came across during her fortnight stay in Baluwa.

She added that most of the houses in the locality were either flattened or rendered inhabitable. Most of the people were staying under tarpaulin sheets.

Her biggest concern is the threat of outbreak of an epidemic in the post-quake Nepal. "One village in the locality we trekked to during our leisure time had its water source damaged. People were using contaminated water," she said, arguing that besides nutritious food, clean water and medical services, many villages in the locality was in immediate need of electricity.

"Many villagers would come up to us and request to use our generator for charging their cell phones so that they could remain in touch with their people in distance."

According to her, their makeshift medical camps would receive some 40 to 50 patients on average. "Some local children would keep coming just to see us work," chuckled the Nepal-loving Canadian whilst showing some of her Baluwa moments captured on her cell phone.

Much as Hanna wanted to stay longer and travel to other quake- hit places in Nepal to lend a helping hand to the Nepalese, the tenure of the first batch of Canadian medical team came to an end.

"This time I'm returning back with unpleasant memories of Nepal, " said Hanna who said it was hard to see the cultural heritage sites in Durbar Square, which have been reduced to rubble.

With her maiden trip of such kind involving treating ailing and injured people in Nepal, Hanna is now itching to go to any disaster-hit country to exploit her valuable experiences in Nepal for the greater good. Endi