Covid-19 crisis: Nepal PM makes emotional appeal for international aid

Nepal is facing an overwhelming crisis as medical supplies run short and cases rise at an alarming pace

Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has penned an emotional appeal, seeking help from the international community, as a crushing second wave of Covid-19 hit the country and incapacitated its health system.

“Our urgent goal is to stop preventable deaths occurring,” he wrote in The Guardian, requesting supplies of vaccines, diagnostic tools, oxygen kits, critical care medicines and equipment, to aid the country’s efforts and save lives.

The landlocked country depends on its neighbour India for most of its supplies. However, with India facing a grim situation itself, supplies to Nepal have dried up, creating a vacuum of vaccines and oxygen.

Nepal’s daily infections had stayed at around 150 at the beginning of April; the figure has passed 9,000 in about a month. More than 4,000 people have died so far.

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Oli wrote that while the country had taken steps to expand testing, tracing and treatment, the sheer scale of the pandemic has strained resources and infrastructure, and the pandemic is turning out to be an “overwhelming burden”.

“This pandemic has highlighted once again the vast gulf between the rich and poor worlds,” Oli wrote in the publication. “This gap should be minimised by making the vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics more accessible to all. Billions of people in the global south still do not know when the Covid-19 vaccine will be made available to them. Solidarity with these nations is essential.”

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Oli made a special appeal to the United Kingdom, as the current chair of the G7 and a “champion of human welfare”, to use its influence to help accelerate the deployment of vaccines around the world, especially to countries that need them most urgently.

“When it comes to the United Kingdom, our expectation of solidarity is high at this difficult time, given the close historical ties that we have nurtured,” Oli wrote, adding: “After all, we are living in an interconnected and interlinked world; this disease affects everyone. Nobody is safe until everyone is safe.”