Kochi: “Jesus Christ is great, he is the one who sent you people here, otherwise what we will do with our grandma, we can’t leave her alone here.”
“These were the words which we heard from a girl, while we were trying to rescue one 90-year-old woman from her house at Valiyapazhambilli Thuruth, near Puthanvelikkara near Paravur,” says Sabith Umer, secretary of the NGO Thanal Palliative and Paraplegic Care Society, which was actively engaged in rescue and relief of the elderly and differentlyabed during the floods.
“She couldn’t even move because her legs were paralysed. The water level was then up to the hip level and we carried her almost two kilometres through the water to reach a safe place,” he recalls.
“Thanal team could rescue almost 160 bedridden, differently-abled and aged persons during the flood. The rescuing of these categories of society is really troublesome and confusing when compared to normal population,” recalls Sabith.
“In Kattipara landslide one wheelchair bound person and in Kuttanad an elderly bedridden woman lost their lives in this phase of the calamity. Thanal’s team of trained 50 volunteers with 20 vehicles in association with Ideal Relief Wing (IRW), an NGO in the disaster management field, made sure that it did not happen in Aluva and nearby places,” Sabith said.
“The differently-abled and aged were moved to hospitals after impressing upon the District Collector about the impracticality of moving them to camps. Those removed included mentally ill. At some points we had to take care of pets too,” says Sabith.
Joe George, state project officer, State Disaster Management Authority, said that Thanal provided co-ordinated need-based unique support from an organization in the evacuation of the differently-abled during floods in the state. “Their team had undergone the training given by SDMA for the same in 2017 and the volunteers used the skills they adopted in this training,” said Joe.
Thanal Palliative and Paraplegic Care Society, has 21 units in Ernakulam district, 12 out-patient clinics, 5 equipment distribution centres, more than 500 trained volunteers and 15 ambulances. Currently 9000+ patients are registered and receiving service from Thanal.
