“He was bleeding, so we had to stop that and then get him down,” said Suvash Dawadi, one of three doctors who has spent the last two months at the Everest ER. ADVERTISEMENTThe doctors staffing the sole emergency room on the roof of the world battle high altitude, freezing conditions and violent weather every climbing season to save the lives of sick and injured mountaineers. Medics running the tent clinic at 5,364 meters (17,600 feet) must compete with medicines freezing overnight, winds that threaten to blow the clinic’s tent away and a cardiac monitor that gives up due to the cold. “Before Everest ER was set up the Sherpas didn’t have any proper coverage,” explained Subarna Adhikari, an orthopaedic surgeon. More than 60 percent of the nearly 400 patients treated at the clinic this season were Sherpas or other locals working on Everest.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer June 01, 2018 05:03 UTC