Children of Kashmir, Children, Kashmir, future of Kashmir

All we ask of you here at Children of Kashmir is to imagine.

Imagine that you are in the hospital because your wife is expecting. You and your wife are full of joy, patiently awaiting the birth of your first child. But they tell you that the fetus seems to be under severe stress and needs to be monitored closely. Worried about the mother and the baby, you ask them to do everything that they can only to realize that there isn't much they can do. The hospital, the biggest in the area, doesn't have a fetal monitor. And the closest one that does is thousands of miles away.

Or imagine that your sister falls sick. You take her to the hospital and are told that she is severely dehydrated. They tell you that they are going to start some intravenous fluids but cannot measure and monitor the electrolytes because the hospital doesn't have a metabolic panel analyzer.

And lastly, imagine that your friend suffers a heart attack and is in the hospital. He develops an abnormal rhythm and they are unable to save him because they lack a defibrillator.

These above mentioned scenarios obviously don't happen in a western country. Because if they did, such 'hospitals' would cease to exist as they don't provide the standard of care. But the above is nothing unusual in Kashmir, a land in turmoil. Such scenes are repeated time and again there, as if fate is playing a cruel joke on the people.

Each day brings forth a new life, but each newborn has to cling for life due to lack of simple equipment. The future of Kashmir, so frail, so innocent, has to fight for survival from the very first breath.

Anecdotal experiences narrated by our friends and colleagues convey the most horrific of circumstances. Of how children die from simple dehydration due to diarrhea. How others die due to the inability to monitor simple vitals or metabolic abnormalities. Of how ambulances are nothing more than vans with stretchers. Of how each and everyday they become frustrated at not being able to provide for their patients, of how their battles are lost before the fight for their patients ever begins.

At Children of Kashmir, our purpose is not to decry a system or politicize the issue and point fingers. Our goal is simple and straightforward. We aim to help, in the little way we can, by providing some basic life saving equipment and other facilities to help the doctors and other staff back in Kashmir save lives. We are not some big organization with hierarchy, where at times the goals get lost somewhere in between. We are a group of Kashmiri professionals who through mutual networking work together to make small projects become realites. Whether it is a pulse oximeter or a fetal monitor, we collect donations from people we know and use that to buy the basics for hospitals back home in Kashmir.

It is not an honor to stand here before you and ask you for something that should have been basic facilities for the children and other patients in Kashmir. But given circumstances, we do stand before you because those in need cannot. They cannot because they are somewhere in Kashmir fighting for survival.

As mentioned above, all we ask at our organization is for you to imagine. Because we sincerely believe that if anyone with a heart, even an ounce of humanity, imagines the above mentioned conditions, they are bound to help. They are bound to realize that we cannot let our people suffer like that while we enjoy the latest in medicine and otherwise. We must realize that it is our duty to help. We must understand that by working together, we can make a difference. A difference for our people back home, a difference for the innocent children of Kashmir.

Help us, help them.

We would be happy to provide details of our program and how it works. For questions, comments, contributions, please email us at: mail@childrenofkashmir

Sincerely,

Children of Kashmir Staff