Source

In the last one year ADEPT, in collaboration with Aravind Eye Hospital and the District Blindness Control Society, has been conducting eye camps in the Tsunami affected villages to identify the elderly with cataracts, school children with refractive errors, and diabetic retinopathy. Free cataract surgery with intraocular lens implantation was performed on a total of 287 senior citizens from the Tsunami affected villages. Free spectacles were issued to 252 school children (10 to 16 years) with refractory errors from Tsunami affected areas.

The World Sight Day celebration conducted

As water levels recede in flood hit Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa, rotting animal carcasses, issues of sanitation, and problems of sewage from sewers, septic tanks, cesspools, and pit privies contaminating wells following eight days of flooding, raise fears of disease.
Preventing outbreaks if diseases like typhoid, dysentery, infectious hepatitis, and other diseases associated with flood waters should now be thye major objective of all relief work.

We urge all organizations involved in

We condemn the massacre of Humanitarian Aid workers in Sri Lanka.
Countries have so far shown little motivation to do what needs to be done. The situation has been made grim by the collapse of the United Nations Small Arms Review Conference on 8 July 2006. Relief workers - those who have dedicated their own lives to protecting civilians - need to be protected. BUT HOW?

The recent massacre of 15 NGO workers in Sri Lankaraises, once again, the specter of the safety of aid workers in conflict zones.

The bodies of the 11 men and 4 women

The refugee wave continues. One hundred and ten Sri Lankan Tamils were offloaded by boats into neck deep water off the coast of Dhanushkodi today, 27 June 2006. They included 38 men, 37 women, 20 boys and 15 girls comprising 32 families. Talking to the ADEPT fact finding team, Steven, a CCF worker from Trincomalee, said that there are more than 10,000 people waiting on the other side to undertake the 30 minute crossing. This is the second refugee landing for Steven, and Rosemary. They first sought refuge in 1983 and were housed in the Madapam refugee camp for 7 years before they tried

Ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka has resulted in Tamil refugees landing in Tamil Nadu, India over the last one month. The majority of the refugees are from Mannar-Trincomalee belt in Sri Lanka. In the last 30 days more than 3000 refugees (around 1150 families) have landed in India and the numbers are increasing as the days goes by. A record number of 234 refugees, all from eastern Trincomalee district of the island, landed on a single day (6th June 2006).
For the refugees, it is a one-way ticket. It is the poorer sections of ordinary society that are most affected

Ten educated unemployed youth from quake affected villages in Kashmir were given hands on training with field exposure by ADEPT in the first week of April 2006. They were trained in disaster health and psychosocial response, and community based disaster preparedness (CBDP) and charged with training 50 villagers each on returning home. Within one month these dynamic and commited youth have trained more than one thousand men and women (744 men and 291 women) covering 27 villages in the districts of Uri, Baramulla, Kuppwara, and Doda. The youth harnessed local resources

More than 40 civilians were injured in the district Baramulla and Udhampur when suspected rebels attacked police. The injured included children. Some of the injured are critical.
Youth trained recently by ADEPT in community based disaster preparedness, found their training handy to render assistance to the injured in the aftermath of these attacks. They rendered first aid and helped evacuate the injured to the hospitals. They distributed food and are offering counsel to the families of the injured.

28 civilians, including eight children,

On 3 April 2006, ten young educated unemployed youth from the districts of Baramulla, Uri, and Kupwara in snow-bound quake affected Kashmir, arrived in sweltering Chennai. They were welcomed at the airport by 10 youth from ADEPT's Youth Response Teams from 3 villages in Cuddalore district. The Kashmiri youth underwent one week of intensive training in psycho-social intervention and community based disaster preparedness at the ADEPT's Communityon Reserach Education and Training Center at Muttukadu near Chennai.
Touring ADEPT's Social Transformation