The Everest base camp medical “Everest ER” will be on the mountain in April 2010 for our 8th season (!) As always, we offer services to base camp climbers, support staff and trekkers-through in support of our mission to prevent and illness at high altitude and to use proceeds for care from non-Nepalis to subsidize free or low cost health care for our Nepali friends. The 2010 staff will be comprised of myself, Lakpa Norbu Sherpa (our faithful logistics coordinator,) Dr Steve Halvorson, and Dr. Peter Hackett, longtime HRA volunteer and world renowned altitude expert (and Everest summitteer!) will join us for the month of May. We plan to carry out a research project aimed at answering a plaguing question a high altitudes everywhere – what’s the ment for high altitude “Khumbu” cough?
The HRA-USA, the nonprofit org set up to fund this , has done so for the past 8 years (the $100/climber season “insurance” donation we collect from non-Nepali climbers doesn’t come close to covering the expenses unless ALL CLIMBERS sign up.) But this nonprofit can’t continue to shoulder the expense for the future…it is time that the costs are spread fairly throughout basecamp, and that we find a way to make sure that without outside support, the will be around for years to come. HRA-USA is happy to continue to recruit volunteers and fund development, but the day to day operations need funding from the climbers who benefit from the service.
We have appealed to Nepal’s ministry of tourism to either 1) create a separate mandatory EBC permit for all non-Nepali climbers or 2) use a small portion of the climbing permit fee to subsidize the operational fees so that everyone supports the and keeps fees low, but we’ve seen no progress yet. Because we can’t continue to subsidize the forever and want to be sure it will endure on it’s own, last year I let the HRA and ministry know that 2010 is the last season that HRA-USA will pay the operations costs. I’ve told the ministry that if they don’t come up with a way to subsidize the (again, all we need is $100/non Nepali climber out of the climbing permit fees?) then there will be no in 2011. We’re asking the expedition community to help us out – when they go to apply for their permit, we’re asking them to put in a plug for paying a fee for the and to mention that the is a big advantage to climbing on the Nepal side.
Wishing you all a happy new year, see you on the rockpile, and thanks for your support!
Luanne
Luanne Freer, MD
Founder/Director, Everest ER
www.EverestER.org
3 thoughts on “An Urgent Request from EverestER”
Brad,
I contact Luanne about doantions otuside the US and this was her reply:
… we’re in the midst of reworking our website – I am told the new one (with a PayPal link for donations and s) will be up “soon.” But in the event that our webgurus run into additional snags, there is already a mechanism in place to allow foreigners to donate for EBC clinic services online – http://active.com/donate/basecamp – if you don’t mind posting this link, that would be great. If they’d rather not pay by credit card and wait, I’m hoping the new everester.org will have the paypal link up very soon.
Any chance of the Everesr ER guys opening up a paypal account. Would be a lot easier for us non-Americans to deposit electronically rather than rely on international snail-mail.
I tried to email Everest ER directly through their website but there appears to be a problem with submitting messages on their ‘contact us’ page.
Everest Base Camp without ER? For the sake of so little money in return for possible life saving treatment it is not worth the risk of losing.
Mount Everest The British Story
Comments are closed.