Disaster relief in China und Burma

In co-operation with the Otto Bock Foundation, the Katarina Witt Foundation organized the relief operation “Gib Kinder Eine Zukunft” (Give Kids a Future) for the victims of Hurricane Nargis and the earthquake in China in 2008. Technical and medical aid was made available for children who became victims of the natural disasters in Asia, making certain that they received emergency treatment.

September 2008: Katarina Witt in China

Katarina Witt was on site from the outset and from the first results given by the aid agency Gib Kindern eine Zukunft (Give Kids a Future) of the victims in Burma and China, was convinced to campaign for more aid. With donations to the Katarina Witt foundation, 28 boys and girls with amputations and paralysis in the Otto Bock agency abroad were brought to Peking, where doctors and orthopedic therapists are taking care of them.

Fund-raiser "Give kids a future"

The Otto Bock Foundation, together with the Katarina Witt Foundation, set up the relief operation “Gib Kindern eine Zukünft” (Give Kids a Future) for the benefit of the victims of the natural disasters in Asia. This relief operation is supported on site by the Sirindhorn Foundation and the National Medical Rehabilitation Center (a foundation of Princess Sirindhorn of Thailand). Together with our partners in the region, we take care of kids who have been buried in rubble and severely injured. Many have lost an arm or a leg and are suffering miserably! With your support, we were able to provide medical and technical treatment for children, and organize wheelchairs and prostheses for some small patients.

Cooperation withFo Otto Foundation

Cooperation with Princess Sirindhorn

13. May 2008: Earthquake in China

The tremor on Monday, May 13th, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, destroyed numerous towns north of Chengdu, capitol of the Sichuan province in southwest China. The hardest hit regions were Wenchuan and Beichuan. The epicenter was located around 90 kilometers northwest of the capital Chengdu.

In Beichuan, where around 160,000 people live, almost 80 percent of the buildings collapsed. In the city Dujiangyan north of Chengdu, a school building collapsed, burying up to 900 pupils beneath it. Only 50 children from the Juyuan Middle School could be pulled from the rubble by emergency services. The earthquake’s tremors were felt even 1500 kilometers away in Peking and apartment buildings and skyscrapers shook and swayed in the metropole of Shanghai. The public authorities suspect that more than 50,000 people were killed and another 26,000 are still missing. The earthquake is the strongest recorded in China since 1976, when an estimated 240,000 people lost their lives in the city of Tangshan near Peking.

27. April 2008: Cyclone in Birma

Cyclone Nargis was the first tropical storm of the cyclone season in the northern Indian Ocean in 2008. It started building up on April 27th and was the first cyclone to hit Myanmar since cyclone Mala in 2006. A state of emergency was declared in five regions of Myanmar, including the metropole and former capital Rangun, which lay directly in the storm’s path.

At its climax the storm reached three-minute wind speeds of 165 kilometers per hour (102,5mph) and one-minute wind speeds of 215 kilometers per hour (133.6mph). Cyclone Nargis was one of the worst tropical storm systems on record.