By Erica Stone | President
“You see these children transform when they come here. When they get some love, when they get their dignity and hope back, they start smiling again. That is what inspires all of us.” - Dr. Bibek Banskota
Children lie quietly in their beds, bandaged, some with external fixators or casts. The postop ward is spotless and airy, and the kids sit up and put their hands together in namaste to greet the doctors who stop at each bed with a smile and an encouraging word. The children smile back. They feel taken care of and heard. Here they have learned that their disability is not karma or shame. They will heal, learn to walk, play, and go to school – isolated no longer from family and community.
But this is not the story for all children in Nepal. Thousands still go untreated. They might live in a remote village with no hospital nearby. Or if there is a hospital, the family may be too poor to afford treatment or may hold on to superstitious beliefs. Then what? The children suffer and become outcasts.
The Hospital and Rehabilitation Center for Disabled Children was established to end the heartbreaks of untreated breaks and burns or birth defects. With gentle expertise and open arms, they make modern medicine available, affordable, and acceptable for all children.
Their patients are sons and daughters of laborers and farmers who earn just a few dollars a day. But no child is turned away for lack of funds, thanks to you and founder Dr. Ashok Banskota’s unquenchable vision to heal Nepal’s poorest children. Over three decades, nearly 100,000 of them have emerged form the hospital to a happier life.
And the work continues. Every year, HRDC field teams discover new patients through mobile camps that reach into the most remote corners of the country. If the kids can’t get to the hospital, the hospital gets to them.
Education and outreach are also integral to the hospital’s ethos – raising awareness about disabilities, showing children nothing is “wrong” with them, and fighting social stigma. In a classroom on site, kids can even keep learning while they recover.
At HRDC the staff all know that expertise alone is not enough. The hospital is built on a foundation of compassion and the wisdom that love heals.
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