Nepal crisis: Kiwi mountaineer calls on NZ for Covid aid

Mountaineer Lydia Bradey on her sixth summit of Everest in May 2019. Photo / Supplied

The first woman to climb Mount Everest without oxygen Lydia Bradey is petitioning the New Zealand Government to help Nepal contain a surge in coronavirus infections.

The Kiwi mountaineer wrote to Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta yesterday, calling on New Zealand to offer Nepal the same assistance extended to India.

The mountainous nation was just as badly affected as India in terms of the number of infections per capita, she said.

"Nepal needs help," Bradey wrote in her email to the foreign minister, "It is a much poorer and less organised country than India and has a markedly less developed health and medical system, with no governmental aid for the poor."

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cross Societies (IFRC) sounded the alarm earlier this month, calling for urgent international support for the outbreak spreading across South Asia.

Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan have all experienced recent record death rates due to Covid-19, the IFRC said in a release.

With a population of 30 million, Nepal has 1,600 intensive care beds and fewer than 600 ventilators, and 0.7 doctors per 100,000 people, according to a Reuters report citing ActionAid Nepal.

Bradey is credited as the first woman in the world to climb Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen in 1988.

In her appeal to the Government, Bradey said Nepal and New Zealand have a "long and strong association" especially through Tenzing Norway and Edmund Hilary's first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953.

"New Zealanders regularly trek in Nepal ... and have established many smaller lower profile agencies who look after regions or villages in Nepal suffering from significant hardship," she wrote.

"Nepalis greet New Zealanders with extra warmth borne of this history."

She says she has heard back from the New Zealand ambassador-designate to Nepal, David Pine, who told her they were aware of the unfolding situation in Nepal and looking at options for New Zealand to help.