Bring healthcare to thousands in rural Nepal

Himalayan HealthCare (HHC) has been conducting medical camps in Nepal’s remote mountain villages since 1992, providing care to populations that, due to their remoteness and the legacy of Nepal’s caste system, otherwise have no options for healthcare.

Before HHC’s presence in Ilam, in far-eastern Nepal, the region had only one doctor to serve its entire population of 250,000, forcing many villagers in need of care to travel long distances to clinics in the lowlands or Indian bordertowns. The villages of Tipling, Shertung and Lapa in Northern Dhading require days of walking through treacherous trails—over passes of up to 14,000 feet—to reach the nearest road. Many patients do not have the means to make the long journey to hospitals in Kathmandu. 

Over the past several months, HHC’s local staff and volunteers have been hard at work carrying out a series of medical camps in both Ilam and Northern Dhading to bring healthcare to patients in need.

In December, in Ilam, HHC conducted a medical camp at the Shree Ambar Higher Secondary School for children with mental disabilities. A total of 67 students were treated from area schools, including 17 mentally disabled youth between the ages of 11 and 22. 

HHC conducted educational workshops with the students and caregivers about personal hygiene, safety during recreational activities, first aid and overall health awareness. All patients were given a general check-up and HHC treated several upper-respiratory tract infections, musculoskeletal pain and a self-inflicted lacerated wound.

The following medicines were provided free of charge by the Ilam District Hospital: Syrup Cefpodoxime; Syrup Cetrizine; Syrup Cifixime; Syrup Ibuprofen and Paracetamol; Syrup Ampicillin and Cloxacillin; Ointment Polysporin; Doclofenac Gel; ear drops and eye drops, Tab. Ciprofloxacin, GammaBHC, Betadine solution, AlMgOH were the other medications.

In January, also in Ilam, HHC treated 109 patients in a free medical camp coinciding with an annual festival called Maibeni Mela. The timing took advantage of the fact that community members had already travelled long distances to Ilam to participate in the festival celebrations.

In November, in Northern Dhading, HHC treated 590 patients, including 73 children, at its Borang Eye Camp in Shertung. More than 200 of these patients were treated for cataracts. 

HHC was assisted by over 50 local volunteers who went door-to-door helping HHC to identify patients in need of care, and helping to get the patients—many of whom were elderly—to Borang. With no road access, many of these patients had to be carried for more than a day to reach the HHC medical camp. 

In addition to cataracts, HHC treated patients for more than a dozen complaints, including presbyopia (farsightedness), corneal opacity, conjunctivitis, ocular allergies and corneal ulcers.

The local community supported the patients by providing blankets, hot water and care for patients. 

HHC is grateful for the team of Nepali doctors, health providers and volunteers who came together to assist our village supervisors, field coordinators and other local staff in helping us to treat nearly 800 patients who otherwise would not have had access to medical assistance. 

We are also grateful for the generous support of donors like you who have helped us to bring life-saving healthcare to hundreds of thousands of people in rural Nepal since 1992.

As we enter our 25th year of operations, we hope some of you will consider joining us on one of our 25th anniversary treks taking place this spring and fall. You will join a team of doctors, dentists, nurses, social workers, teachers and other volunteers--including friends and family members--through the Himalayas to Tipling, Shertung and Lapa where you will work with our staff and the local communities to provide training, medical care and other support to those who need it most.

For more information or to apply, please visit our website, www.himalayanhealthcare.org. 

Thank you once again for your support and we hope to see you soon in Nepal.

With gratitude, 

Christina

Links:

• Full Report on HHC's Borang Eye Camp (November 2016)
• Apply for HHC's Spring 2017 Medical Trek
• Apply for HHC's Fall 2017 Medical Trek

Namaste friends,

2016 has been a very trying but also a very productive year for the people we serve in remote mountain villages of Tipling, Shertung, Lapa, Jharlang and Ree in Nepal’s Northern Dhading District. 

As you are aware, the devastation caused by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in April 2015 affected millions of people in Nepal. More than 8,000 people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands lost homes, schools, livestock and the means to live. 

The trauma of the quake and its hundreds of aftershocks still haunts me and my family, but the generosity and compassion of each of you is far beyond and bigger than that. I want to thank you for helping us help the people we love and serve in my country. 

I want to share with you one story in particular of a young woman from the village of Ree named Mamita whose education is currently being sponsored by Himalayan HealthCare (HHC):

I am the first born of my parents. There are 7 people in our family, including grandparents. No one had been educated in our family before… and I couldn’t go to school in the beginning of my life. My childhood was spent looking after goats. 

When I was 8 or 9 years old, my parents saw other kids going to school, and they put me into a school called Pasang Chowki… I am the first literate member of the family.

After the earthquake, our home was destroyed. There was no safe place to hide from the rain or the sun. There was rubble everywhere. We didn’t know where to live or what to eat… Whatever we’d had in our home was buried in rubble.

Then the HHC scholarship results came in, and I got a chance to study science. I had decided to pursue this topic because there was a shortage of science teachers in the villages so I wanted to study science and return to my village to teach.

Because of my economic condition, HHC offered to support me in my studies and I was very happy to hear it. I’ll finish my science studies and will go to my village and help, and will give education to those who need it. I want to thank from my heart HHC for giving me a chance to fulfill my wish to study science.

Stories like Mamita’s are all too common in Northern Dhading, where the everyday struggles of living in poverty were compounded by the devastation of the earthquake. 

We are grateful to have had the opportunity, thanks to donors like you, to not only provide shelter, food, clean water, medical relief and other long-term support to families like Mamita’s, but to continue our support of promising students and health workers dedicated to improving quality of life in their villages. 

During the 2015-16 academic year, HHC has sponsored 14 students, providing comprehensive support for technical and other studies. This continues an HHC tradition since 1992, under which we have supported students, which particular emphasis on ethnic minorities, as health assistants, auxiliary health workers, nurse midwives, hospital managers, teachers, doctors, nurses, veterinary technicians and more. And it is a tradition we are committed to continuing. 

This #GivingTuesday, donations made to Himalayan HealthCare through GlobalGiving will be matched with generous support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For those of you who are able to donate at this time, your donations—in any amount—will contribute to supporting more students like Mamita in the coming academic year. 

Our work is only possible because of the incredible generosity and outpouring of kindness from donors like you, many of whom have accompanied us on medical treks to the villages and seen the impact of our work firsthand, and many of you whom we’ve never met who nonetheless have stepped up to help us out of pure compassion for fellow human beings in duress. I cannot tell you how this has touched me and changed me in so many ways. 

Your kindness and blessings have saved hundreds of lives and continue to serve those who are deeply in need.

Thank you from Nepal and happy holidays to you and your loved ones,

Anil Parajuli