Providing Comfort in Conflict: ActionAid Provides Food and Medicine in Kashmir
ActionAid is providing food and life-saving drugs to critically ill patients at several government hospitals in Srinagar as Kashmir grapples with violence and conflict. Hospitals lack vital medicines and even the food to nourish their patients. Kashmiri civil society groups and local newspapers urged ActionAid to help. ActionAid is in Srinagar, providing food and medicine to hospitals throughout the region. The state government is supporting ActionAid’s efforts to supplement their meager supplies
Kashmir Relief
Kashmir
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ActionAid is the only nongovernmental agency responding to the current humanitarian crisis in Kashmir, which has snowballed into massive demonstrations over the subject of the transfer of forested land, traditionally used for gathering food and fuel by local communities, to the Amarnath shrine board.
ActionAid immediately provided prescription medicines for 224 critically injured patients and provided emergency food packets consisting of rice, grains, sugar and salt to 670 families. We also provided drugs for 17 life-saving surgeries.
"Akib, a twelve year old boy from Kupwara district, whose leg had to be amputated after being injured by army gunfire got medicines for the operation. A Nepalese woman, Sita, making a pilgrimage to the Amarnath shrine, who had taken seriously ill on the way, was also given necessary drugs," says Bashir Irfan, one of ActionAid's coordinators in Kashmir.
More than 650 people received first aid and essential medicines at two health camps run by ActionAid in Srinagar. The camps are run by 17 ActionAid staff including five doctors. Six volunteer doctors are also treating patients at these camps.
ActionAid staff braved harassment by security forces on the roads. Security forces regularly fire on crowds to keep them from defying the curfew. Security personnel do not permit free movement on the roads, even though ActionAid secured special curfew passes for its vehicles from the local government. According to news reports, at least 31 protesters have died as a result of police shootings and more than 500 have been injured in clashes with security officials in the past in two weeks.
Please support ActionAid's efforts to provide food and medicine to Kashmiris caught up in this crisis. Donate now.
