UK MP urges government to help Nepal fight COVID-19 crisis

Stressing on the Nepal COVID-19 crisis, Mike Amesbury Member of Parliament for Weaver Vale, United Kingdom and also a Shadow Housing Minister on Tuesday urged the UK government to provide medical equipment and vaccines to Nepal. 

“Nepal is in a deep COVID-19 crisis with thousands of people dying each week because of the lack of oxygen supply, ventilators and vaccines. Without urgent help from the UK government more lives will be lost,” Amesbury said in Parliament. 

The Labour MP in a tweet also urged the UK government to provide medical equipment and vaccines to Nepal. 

“Nepal urgently needs help to fight Covid. It has the world's highest transmission rate and isn't getting vaccines fast enough. I’ve urged the government to help provide supplies of medical equipment and vaccines. Thanks to COVID-19 Alliance for Nepal-UK for their work helping to tackle the virus there,” read the tweet. 

COVID Alliance for Nepal UK is a group of UK based individuals and organizations that have come together to help the country tackle the second wave of COVID-19.

In addition to this, Amesbury has also a signed a letter with a group of cross-party MPs urging the government last week to provide urgent and substantial aid and vaccines to alleviate suffering in Nepal. 

The letter signed by sixteen MPs called on foreign secretary Dominic Raab to shift Nepal to the highest priority to combat the COVID-19 crisis and “work to get vaccines into the country soon as a matter of priority as well as urgently provide much needed medical supplies, including oxygen generators, concentrators and therapeutic drugs.”

“We are very concerned about the delay in regarding the sending of emergency supplies to Nepal,” the letter said.

Outlining the relations between the two countries, the letter said, “We have a longstanding friendship with Nepal, most visible in the Gurkha battalions who have stood beside us in many conflicts and over 100,000 Brits of Nepali descent.”

Earlier in May, the UK had provided medical items which include 260 units of ventilators (130 CPaP and 130 BiPaP machines), and 19,200 eye protectors. 

Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had earlier said that the government aims to vaccinate its whole population by the end of the year even as the country reported 1,681 new COVID-19 cases and 41 deaths on Tuesday. 

The average number of new infections reported each day in Nepal has fallen by more than 5,600 over the last three weeks. 

There have been 612,202 infections and 8,506 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the country since the pandemic began.