Bay man’s Nepal aid mission

[caption id="attachment_81648" align="alignright" width="300"] SEEKING THE LIVING: Nico Louw, of Port Elizabeth, uses a life locator device to find survivors under the rubble of this building in Kathmandu. A member of a Chinese rescue team is in the foreground -[/caption]

AFTER a week of dodging structurally unsound buildings, fishing people out of the rubble in quake-hit Nepal and helping in rural areas close to the earthquake’s epicentre, a Nelson Mandela Bay lecturer is glad to be back after his first international aid mission.

Nico Louw, 41, head of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s new emergency medical care department, returned to the city on Wednesday night.

He was part of a 20-strong search-and-rescue team in the group of 80 sent to the quake-hit Nepalese capital Kathmandu last Tuesday.

When a call came for rescue workers days after the quake struck, Louw said he did not hesitate, as rescuing people was in his blood.

-Zandile Mbabela