Scotland's Biggest Cities Raise £2 million For Nepal

People in Scotland's two largest cities have given around £2 million to an appeal raising money for those affected by the Nepal earthquake.

A total of £1,127,500 has been donated in Edinburgh with a further £820,000 in Glasgow raised for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal.

The totals place them second and third respectively in the list of the UK's most generous cities, behind London in first place.

The still-rising death toll from the April 25 quake, Nepal's worst in more than 80 years, has reached more than 7,300.

Across Scotland, £3.5m has been raised since the DEC appeal was launched last Tuesday, with £41m raised throughout the UK.

The money will allow aid charities to reach tens of thousands of people with emergency supplies, including food, shelter, water and sanitation kits.

The DEC, which is made up of 13 UK aid charities, said it was humbled by the scale of the UK public's response.

Neil Mathers, chairman of the Scottish appeal, said: The people of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and indeed across Scotland as a whole, have been incredibly generous and I want to thank each and every person who has donated so far.

Thanks to their contributions our teams have been able to reach a large number of people in just a few days, but there is still so much more to do.

Nearly two weeks on and the response by the public continues to amaze me.

This money will help us to scale up efforts to reach more of the estimated 8 million people affected by the devastating earthquake, which struck west of the capital Kathmandu on Saturday April 25.

Hundreds of thousands of people, many in remote villages, have had their homes damaged or destroyed and are in urgent need of food, water, shelter and medical care. Most are sleeping in the open or in make shift camps, with rain and limited accessibility of many locations making aid deliveries challenging.

The funds donated by people in Scotland will allow us to increase the humanitarian response: despite immense challenges, aid is getting through to more and more people who desperately need it.''

The majority of funds raised have come from individual donations from members of the public, but the UK government also contributed £5m through UK Aid Match and the Scottish Government has donated £250,000.