Nepal: Do a Small Thing, Make a Big Difference
Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a per capita GDP of 240 per year. The country is just emerging from a civil war. It has a horrendous maternal and child mortality rate, and the medical care sector is small. Most people have no access to doctors or nurses.
I’m a former RN-paramedic, now an emergency physician and a professor at the B P Koirala Institute of Medical Sciences in Dharan, which is the largest hospital and foremost health profession university in Nepal. Our ED is very busy, filled with extremely sick, badly injured and very poor people. We get very little funding, as we are a government institution. We have almost no equipment and no ambulances. I’m starting programs to train emergency nurses, paramedics and physicians, and my trainees are bright and eager.
If any of you have any used but serviceable equipment or supplies--even disposables like ambu bags, ventilator circuits, cervical collars, staplers, etc--please contact me. If anyone wants to volunteer helping these friendly, gentle people and training young professionals in a beautiful subtropical landscape at the foot of the Himalayan range, contact me. Thanks for your help.
Brian Cobb, MD
Professor of Emergency Medicine
drbriannepal@yahoo.co.in