Dear Friends of Calcutta Rescue,
I know that many of you will be worried about the situation following Cyclone Amphan last week, so I just want to give you a quick update.
The good news is that all our staff and schoolchildren survived the horror of Wednesday night and the impact on our own buildings was limited.
The bad news is that while we hope most of our patients are well, we’ve been unable to establish contact with many of them. In the rural areas around Kolkata, where many of them live, there was devastation, with crops destroyed, homes obliterated and whole villages flooded.
Within the city, thousands of homes in the slums had been damaged. So many families were drenched after their roofs were ripped off, what food they had was ruined and in some cases their meagre possessions had been blown away or swept away by flood water.
It couldn’t have come at a worse time as we are still in coronavirus lockdown, and the number of Covid cases has been rising rapidly. Added to that, the roads, the morning after, were impassable due to the number of blown-down trees, much of the city had no electricity or water and mobile networks were down.
Our first task was to ensure all staff and our schoolchildren were OK. By the end of Thursday Ananya and her teachers had managed to trace all 650 youngsters and confirm that they and their families were safe, although many were traumatised by what they had been through.
On Friday I was able to reach Tala Park to assess the situation – part of the roof of our school had been ripped off and a tree had crashed down over the parking area damaging one of the mobile ambulances.
I visited several nearby slums and it was apparent that many families were in urgent need of plastic sheeting to repair their shacks, and that no-one else was there providing support. These very poor people were already suffering from the impact of many weeks of lockdown, without jobs or money and now their food and homes were damaged or destroyed.
So the team have thrown themselves into the task of providing sheeting and food to those most in need, working in a dozen slums, with the Street Medicine team continuing to take aid out to more distant areas. Repairs begin today at Tala Park School and then to Chitpur clinic and No 10 School which also suffered damage to roofs.
As I said in my last update, we had been focusing on training staff on how to operate safely under Covid conditions when the clinics reopen.
With the easing of some lockdown restrictions in Kolkata we had planned to restart the clinics on June 1, but this will have to be pushed back by two weeks now, to allow for repairs and so we can continue to focus on providing cyclone relief over the coming days.
We are also installing perspex screens at the clinics to provide a physical barrier between staff and patients and are creating an online spreadsheet that will allow us to log telephone consultations by our doctors.
A week on from the cyclone, I am astonished by how resilient people are here. Whatever life throws at them they pick up the pieces and start putting their lives back together – time and time and time again.
I want to again pay tribute to the staff at Calcutta Rescue, some of whom suffered damage to their own homes, who have worked with such commitment to assist those in need over recent days.
And I want to thank all of you who have kept us in your thoughts and prayers. I know that some of you have already given money to help the relief effort in West Bengal while others have been spreading the word and doing things to raise money. Neelu Sharma, for instance, who lives in London is doing a 48-hour sponsored fast on Thursday and Friday for Calcutta Rescue, so please do make a donation if you can on her JustGiving page .
Or 17 year-olds Indrayudh and Twesha from the Heritage School who live in Kolkata and have been so moved by the plight of their fellow citizens, have started their first ever fundraiser on the online Give India platform. Please click here to support them also.
It is so heartening to know that, despite the global impact of pandemic, people all round the world still care about what happens here.
Thank you so much,
Jaydeep
It is a tough time for all of us!
But it is even more difficult for the people whom we serve, the poor, the destitute and now unemployed due to the lockdown.
Please help us so that we can help them. Your contribution is what we need to help them in this time.