The Nepal Appeal
Doctors for Nepal has launched The Nepal Appeal, to raise funds in the immediate aftermatch of the recent earthquake, and to aid with the assistance of ongoing medical needs in rural Nepal.
Your help is desperately needed at this time and for the foreseeable future. As the situation has evolved and information is coming through to us, the gravity and enormity of the needs in Nepal cannot be emphasised enough.
Doctors for Nepal is undertaking a four phased response; your donation will be used to help achieve these goals, and your donation will enable Nepal to cope ...
Clinging to life
The reality of being born in Nepal is that statistically speaking, you have a one in 20 chance of dying in infancy. In rural areas, where access to health care is minimal, or you are born to a mother with many other children to look after, your chance of dying goes up even higher. We came across this small day old baby when we arrived inManma Hospital. His mother had had a difficult delivery, and had required intervention from the midwives upon arrival at the hospital. He had aspirated (breathed in his own faeces) prior to delivery, and his lungs were in ...
Treacherous roads
Travel in nepal is notoriously dangerous. The tiny planes that serve the far reaches of the country do not infrequently fall out of the sky, and the "roads" are not roads as we know them in the West. The Karnali Highway is a very big name for a very small road; it is, to all intences and purposes, a track that clings to the side of a mountain. It is extremely bumpy, in some places gravelled (that's the good bit!), and has absolutely no defences what so ever. We passed a truck on the first day which had just gone off a cliff; the driver was dead. Later we passed a bus that ...
A pregnant woman’s journey
When staying in Lalit's village we were asked to see a pregnant woman who was unwell. She was 6 months pregnant, and appeared very unwell with abdominal pain and a fever. She was lucky to have lalit in the village that day; after examining her in her house in front of the elders, she was advised to urgently go to hospital as she hadn't felt her baby move for a week.
The only way to hospital was by foot, and she was too ill to walk. We followed her journey, as she was carried in a chair on the backs of a porter and her husband - who took it in turns to carry her down and ...
Lalits home
It was a complete honour to be able to spend some time with Lalits family in his mountainside village. We walked for 2 days over incredibly steep terrain, even through snowfields, and arrived in the dark. After an beautiful drumming welcome, we were given the a meal of Dahl baht (Dahl and rice). This is eaten twice a day by almost all Nepalese (and us, as there simply is nothing else to eat). We slept in a small room in a traditional house, where all cooking is over an open fire in the main room.
The next day we visited the health post, and Lalit saw some patients who ...