AmeriCares India for setting up medical relief centre

PATNA: The AmeriCares India, a charitable trust of Delhi, intends to set up a state-of-art medical relief centre in Patna in collaboration with the Union government to improve the disaster management system in Bihar.

Talking to TOI, AmeriCares managing director P M Parikh said that he held a high-level meeting with minister for disaster management Nitish Mishra and bureaucrats recently to chalk out a comprehensive plan for developing the medical disaster relief centre in the state capital. The meeting discussed ways to give more teeth to the disaster management system in the state.

The Union government, which has set up national disaster management system having a fund of Rs 10,000 crore under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is keen to utilise it in Bihar giving an impetus to the state rehabilitation-cum-relief management system, Parikh said.

Parikh, a former director of Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, said that about 4,000 natural disasters had been reported across the globe during the past one decade in which about eight lakh people had died. About 507 million people were affected by different kinds of natural disasters during the past three years alone, he said, adding about 14 million people were rendered homeless in these incidents.

Parikh maintained that India is quite vulnerable to natural calamity. According to a survey, while 57 per cent of the land mass has been vulnerable to earthquakes, 28 per cent is drought-prone. However, chances of floods and cyclones are about 12 per cent and eight per cent respectively in the country, he said.

About the recent Kosi floods, Parikh said that AmeriCares worked relentlessly during Kosi floods and provided medical relief to the flood-affected people. There is enough scope for strengthening the disaster management system in Bihar, he said.

Under the proposed project, Parikh intends to set up relief centres at a few reputed hospitals, including Mahavir Cancer Sansthan so that they could swing into action quickly to deal with any emergency.

Source : Times of India