After Nepal earthquake, caring for the injured

When an earthquake struck Nepal on April 25, 2015, Renee Salas said it felt like she was “on a boat at sea.” After the shaking stopped, the 34-year-old emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, who is also a part-time MPH student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, started caring for the injured.

Salas has been in Nepal since March 1 as part of a two-year fellowship in wilderness medicine, working at the Himalayan Rescue Association clinic in Pheriche, a village below the Mount Everest Base Camp. She shared her experience in an April 28, 2015 Harvard Gazette article.

Salas said buildings crumbled; villagers stayed outside in snowy weather because of fear of aftershocks; she and others from the medical team treated numerous injuries among climbers and sherpas after they descended from Everest Base Camp; and helicopters arrived to evacuate the critically ill.

“The country will require basic needs such as food/water and medical and infrastructure personnel and supplies,” Salas said. “Similar to the Haiti earthquake aftermath, which I participated in, this will be a marathon and not a sprint, as further pitfalls lie ahead as we attempt to rebuild this country.”

Read the Harvard Gazette article: ‘I felt as if I was on a boat at sea’

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After Nepal quake, Harvard responds (Harvard Gazette)