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People wade through the receding flood waters in Lal Chowck. Shahid Tantray. All rights reserved.
September 2014 saw Kashmir swept by the worst flood it had seen in a century, with 2,000 villages severely hit and over a million people left displaced. For over a month, the Indian government deployed its army and air force along with their medics and paramedics, to bring respite to the region. Soon, roads were cleared and external support was pulled out, even as a ‘red alert’ threat of epidemic outbreak was declared in the region.
Despite widespread knowledge of the post-deluge period being prone to deadly water-borne pandemics, preventive measures are an oft-ignored step in the disaster management checklist. Yet, this time was different. An independent group of Kashmiris in the USA – the Kashmir Overseas Association – provided free medical Skype-support. The immensely effective initiative, which started receiving about 200 calls a day soon after, highlighted two things: one, the actual potential of tele-medicine, if brewed together with innovation, and two, the weakness of the government in fully embracing the technology that it had ushered in with great enthusiasm 13 years ago.
