VANCOUVER — A team of 16 doctors, nurses and paramedics from across Canada left from the Vancouver International Airport Saturday headed for earthquake-stricken Nepal.
The members of the Canadian Medical Assistance Team are headed to aid Gorkha – four hours west of Kathmandu.
There will be six teams from CMAT deployed over the next six to eight weeks and a field hospital group is also being deployed that will provide a mobile hospital where they can perform a variety of medical procedures.
CMAT’s rapid assessment team is already on the ground, along with a volunteer group of firefighters from Burnaby and Mission who are in the country at their own expense.
READ MORE: Burnaby firefighters help coordinate rescue of 4 hikers in Nepal
“We owe it to the rest of the world; it’s like a global good neighbour type thing, you know. I hope that if anything ever happens here, someone would come help us out as well,” nurse Teresa Berdusco told Global News.
Their departure comes as more members of Canada’s Disaster Assistance Response Team are deployed.
“The Prime Minister decided today to send additional elements of the DART to ensure that we have engineering capabilities, medical capabilities and humanitarian coordination capabilities of our own on the ground in Nepal,” said Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander.
One group that hasn’t yet been sent to Nepal by the federal government is the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team, known as HUSAR.
WATCH: HUSAR not in Nepal
The Vancouver group was out performing a training demonstration today at the East Annex building at City Hall. But there are places they would rather see their services used instead.
“I think we all feel frustration because we all train to do a job and this team along with the other four teams – we have four Canadian task form teams in Canada – and none of which have been deployed to an earthquake,” HUSAR/CANF-1 Assistant Chief Joe Foster told Global News. The group has notified the Federal Government they are ready to go, but so far, no word.
A week after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake tore through Nepal, the death toll has now surpassed 7,000.
–With files from Nadia Stewart and Jennifer Palma.
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