MUN med students will travel to Nepal this summer

A group of medical students from Newfoundland and Labrador will go ahead with their plans to travel to Nepal this summer, despite Saturday's devastating earthquake.

• Nepal earthquake kills more than 1,900 people 
• Earthquake aftershock hits Nepal and India, magnitude 6.7

Jill Allison, the global health co-ordinator with Memorial University's Faculty of Medicine, organizes a program that brings medical students to the capital of Kathmandu for training.

Allison said a group of eight students had just purchased their plane tickets prior to the devastating 7.9-magnitude quake.

Allison has long-standing ties to the South Asian nation, having first backpacked there in 1979.

She worked as a rural nurse in Nepal in the early 1980s, and went back with her family in the 1990s for three years while her husband worked at Tibhuvan University's medical school in Kirtipur, Kathmandu.

"I started taking medical students back three years ago for a program we call InSIGHT, International Summer Institute for Global Health Training. So I've been able to introduce a new generation of would-be medical professionals to the wonderful country of Nepal," Allison said. 

A tremendous loss

While she's still in a state of shock, Allison said she's relieved to hear that some of her friends in the area are safe.

"There are three cities in Kathmandu," she told CBC News. 

"It's kind of like St. John's, Mount Pearl, C.B.S. There's three cities that are all linked and very close — they've all kind of merged together so you can go almost from one to the next in a continuous fashion. The community of Bhaktapur has apparently suffered tremendously." 

Allison's heard that as many as half of the homes in the community have been destroyed. 

The earthquake, which originated outside Kathmandu, was Nepal's worst in over 80 years.

"Seeing the destruction of old buildings, of new buildings, seeing people being pulled out of rubble, it's unimaginable," she said.

"I just feel like it's a tremendous loss to the world. A city like Kathmandu is phenomenal. We won't realize the loss for some time to come, I'm afraid."

The next InSIGHT program is scheduled to begin in July, and Allison is due to arrive in Nepal on June 18.

The Nepalese hospital that hosts the students has not suffered any damage and, from Allison's understanding, the streets in the area are navigable. 

"I obviously don't want to take a bunch of students into Kathmandu and put pressure on our colleagues and friends who are trying to deal with this tragedy, but we'll see what the impact will be for us."

Allison said she has spoken with her Canadian and Nepali colleagues in Asia, and believes the trip will be able to go ahead in July without stressing the resources of people on the ground.