Nepal’s cabinet met at the base of Everest on December 4th to highlight the impact of climate change on the Himalayas and adopted a 10-point Everest Declaration.
Wearing oxygen masks and warm jackets, the cabinet met for about half an hour at Kala Patthar at an altitude of 5,242 meters surrounded by the world’s highest mountains and glaciers.
The ministers flew in to Lukla, in the Everest region where the nearest airstrip is, a day earlier. The cabinet met out in Kalapatthar in the open where tables had been set up.
Two doctors from Mountain Medicine Society of Nepal (MMSN), Dr. Jhapindra Pokharel and Dr. Subash Khanal, were in charge of looking after the overall medical aspect of the trip. Thanks to their excellent planning to prevent altitude related illnesses, the ministers did not encounter any medical problem despite such a rapid ascent. Congratulations Dr. Pokharel and Dr. Khanal on a job well done!!
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10 November, 2009
Dear All,
It has been announced and media have well picked up that the Nepalese Ministers are preparing to have a Cabinet Meeting at Everest Base Camp/Gorakshep (~5200m from sea level) to give the message of Global Warming to the world and its effect in Nepal Himalayas especially to Glaciers.
As per the news reports there will be 60 people comprising Prime Minister, 27 other ministers, beurocrats, journalists and doctors! As far as it has been said they will fly in chopper to this elevation and held meeting. So, they are going to fly from Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, (~1300m) to ~5200m altitude within one hour and going to stay for more than one hour as meeting is likely to last that long though details are not yet brought out.
Media have alreay picked up this news worldwide but without a single word on the risk of going to this extreme high altitude and so fast.
Some of these news media are:
BMJ Forum for Doctors (doc2doc) has been discussing about it as well.
Therefore, here it seems that the cabinet meeting is likely to be held and they seemed to be inspired by Maldivian Cabinet who held Cabinet meeting underwarter sometime ago to give similar message.
The concern here is the risk of going too high (extreme altitude), too fast and in a volatile weather condition in the mountains which might lead to delay in the schedule while returning and would force to stay longer high up! That could lead an unfortunate outcome and it could prove this as a misadventure instead.
The Mountain Medicine Society of Nepali (MMSN) is very concerned about it and would like to give a strong warning to such a bad way of ascending to high altitude!
