South Asian Medical Team for Dialogue&Reconciliation

With two rival countries pointing their nuclear warheads to each other, South Asia region continues to be a potential epicenter of nuclear calamities in the world. However, for some time now, the hostilities between these two countries have weakened due to enormous effort from civil society, I/NGOs and people from all sectors of society and also to some extent, due to sanity in the part of politicians from both countries.

The nuke issues in SA shouldn’t be viewed in isolation but these are the manifestation of traditional power relations in the region and this is compounded by changing power balance in post September 11 world. The nuke issues in SA are graver than it may seem to many people since it absorbs a great deal of development resources of poverty-stricken people who are largely illiterate about the dreadful consequences of nukes.

Politicians have been able to cajole these innocent people and have filled in these people a fake sense of security purchased by enormous investment in nuclear and conventional arsenals. In turn, these innocent and poor people are robbed off their breads from their mouths and clothes from their body and their children deprived of light of education. Ironically, they are made to rejoice hyping about the false sense of being strong with the nuclear weapons.

Being raised under constant threat of an imminent nuclear warfare, the role of physicians and the medical students from the region can’t be undermined .Having this at the back of the mind a novel project has been framed named South Asian Medical Team for Dialogue and Reconciliation which sets its goals for the advocating nuclear abolition starting from the South Asia region and hence providing it a regional touch and the concern. The project is recently in the pipeline and a major undertaking of the South Asia Regional Centre of IPPNW in Kathmandu, Nepal.