Updates from Chandan - 11 Aug

Folks,

These are the relief materials that I have with me now;

Medicines:

1. Chlorine tabs-90 packs (90000 tabs)
   
2. Clozole-V6-75 strips of 6 tabs
3. Cancap-VT-90 strips........."

Polythene sheets(courtesy Mr MM Verma)

8 bundles (20x2)meters double layer

Given to Dr.Ravi;

1. Chlorine tabs-10 packs(10000 tabs)
2. Polythene sheets- 3 bundles

These medications are supposed to reach tomorrow;

1. Metrogyl,
2. Antibiotics,
3. Betadine.

I have procured these for distribution,

1000 match boxes,
500candles
Alum( fitkiri) around 20 kg..will buy more en route
Clothes(dhotis/bedsheets/children/women)

Tata salt 50 kg

More or less this is the present stock.

What we need

1. Chlorine tabs...more..more
2. Clotrimazole anti fungal antibacterial dusting powder*
3. Oral re hydration salts( ORS)
4. Boric powder( dusting)
5. Polythene sheets

We hav been supplied Clotrimazole tablets..which has the same generic composition as 'clotrimazole antifungal antibactarial dusting powder*' but in a very high concentration. We can crush these tablets and add talcum powder to bring it to 1% w/w, and then repack and distribute. But I would rather avoid this as this is a schedule H drug, So, we will source this powder in the next lot or buy it locally (75gm/Rs 36/Cipla)

I am gathering more stuff.

Will leave tomorrow after collecting the remaining medicine..Two Greenpower volunteers are reaching Patna tonite,will be helpful for me

Plan to hand over a portion of relief materials to Mr. Sudhanshu, CO,Gaighat and move toward Darbhanga. If I can reach Kusheshwar sthan , then there are people there who can take up distribution for deep interiors.

Next move in to Jitwaria( possibly Monday) Give relief material to Vivek's folks and actually try to form a base for distribution in that area.Jitwaria is 4 km down from from Kalyanpur(13 km from Samastipur). I should be able to drive in to Jitwaria, so that could well be base 1 for further aid involvement.

News coming in from flood hit areas already indicate large number of diarrhea cases..so most important thing in this week would be ORS and anti diarrheal tablets.

Me and Ravi are working out how to make sterile ORS available to a larger section of people.

We should concentrate on medicines (chlorine tabs/ ORS) primarily..at least for this week.

Chandan Singh

Executive Director
GreenPower India

+91 612 6450916
+91 99317 63070

Hyderabad based NGO Annapurna supporting us in our initiative

From: Hemlata Arcot [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 1:56 PM
To: Adarsh Rawat; Madineni, Narayana Aditya; K, Aparna; Arvind Tonne; Bhanu; Bharathi Krishnappa; bhaskar Reddi; Chandradeep B; Dharani; Arcot, Ganesh Anand; Arcot, Hemlata; Jagadish Gundu; Ghantasala, Lavanya; Lavanya Ghantasala VS; M Praveen; M, Praveena; Manoj Janagama; N, Sai Prasanth; Naresh Gowd; Naveen Mahadevuni; Pradeepa K; P, Ragasudha; Ram Mohan; Ramesh Raju K; Rita Sen; Sasidhar R; Sasikala P.; Pal, Shashi; Shrikant Babar; Soumik Kumar Mitra; Sudha Parimala; Rani, Sudha; Tataji; Vasudha Bomireddy; VishalKumar Vasi; Viswanath Munnangi
Subject: Urgently need your help

Dear Annapurnites,

An emergency situation has come to my attention. The floods in the Indian states of Bihar, UP, and Orissa has rendered 1000s of families homeless. About 1100 villages have been affected and cut off due to the floods. A colleague of mine, Vivek Kumar, hails from one of those villages named Jitwariya, Samastipur district, Bihar (110 from Patna, 150 Km from Varanasi).

These news article have a little information:

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/s-asia-floods-worst-in-living-memory-says-un/46268-3-1.html

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/217167/118664896778.htm

Vivek is trying to help the people affected by collecting old clothes and medicines and handing it over to the Red Cross India - Hyderabad office so they can package the items and mail it to Red Cross in Patna. Here is the link to Red Cross India branches: http://www.indianredcross.org/sb.htm

I request your urgent help in the matter. If you have any old clothes that you can donate, here are 2-3 ways you can get them to me.

1. At Lal Bazaar hostel tomorrow, there will be an Annapurna drive between 4 pm and 6 pm. You can bring the clothes there.

2. Hand them to any one of the Annapurna volunteers as below by sunday evening by making an arrangement accordingly.

Here are the volunteer names and numbers:

Aditya Madineni: xxxx

Sai Prasanth: xxxx

Shrikant Babar:xxxx

Myself / Ganesh: xxxx

3. At my home, you can drop the clothes anytime by sunday evening.

The only major requirement is that the clothes be clean and ironed. This is the only way Red Cross will accept them. We need to send this by monday morning. So, this requires urgent attention.

In addition, Annapurna will also sponsor medicines and chlorine tablets (to sanitize the water).Currently, there is shortage of clean drinking water and people are using the flood waters for drinking. This will cause diseases. Adding chlorine tables to water helps sanitize it.

Please spread this message to your friends and help this cause.

If you wish to help in any other way, please let us know. Please keep in mind, that this requires urgent attention.

Regards,

Hema

Updates from Bangalore

Friends,
We had a very good meeting today in Bangalore. We were able to discuss some of the the plan that we can take forward in the second stage of flood relief operation.


Attendees:- Naveen Sharma, Divyanshu, Ashok Sharma, Nitish and Sanjeev
Venue:- Anand Coaching Center, BTM layout B'lore( Courtesy Anandji)

Following is the detailed description of agenda discussed in the meeting:-

1) We collected a substantial amount of clothes and Ashokji couriered it to IRCS Patna, thru DTDC as Bangalore IRCS was non-committal towards that.

2) The members in the meeting, addressed the need to identify the problems in the post flood scenario,that can be solved thru a virtual group like us.

3) Being a virtual group, with a large number of members living outside Bihar, it was identified that we do not have a large number of local presence in Bihar. This puts an operational limitiation on what we can achieve with our efforts.

4) Naveen Sir came up with a proposal that if we can identify a village in North Bihar( being most badly effected in flood), where we have a good local guardian, then we can adopt that village and start development work there.
Since our very own Vivek's ( Hyderabad), village Jitwaria( near Samastipur), has been badly affected by the flood, it was decided that we can put our efforts towards improving the life of people of Jitwaria.In this initiative we can be very well supported by Uncle and Aunty ( Vivek's parents), as they are based there .

5) Naveen Sir will send a detailed mail regarding this initiative throw it open for discussion within the group.

6) We also talked to Chandan in Patna over phone, and he has advised us to arrange sending antibiotic powder as a part of relief material.


regards,
Divyanshu