Rasuwa District Health Care :: Completing the System in SW Nepal

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Rasuwa District Health Care

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Located a few kilometers from the border with Tibet, the Rasuwa District is home to dozens of small Tamang Villages. The Tamang are believed to have migrated from Mongolia via Tibet hundreds of years ago and settled in this remote mountain area. Life in many Tamang Villages carries on much as it has for centuries. For many of the villages subsistence farming is their way of life and these rugged, inventive people continue to live on the steep hillsides of the northern Rasuwa District.

It is one of the lowest-income districts in Nepal, ranking 66th out of 75 districts. Development is difficult, since the access to capital per capita is only 240 rupees (about US$3.80) compared to, say Kathmandu, where the capital per person is over 40,000. There is one road in and out of Rasuwa and everywhere else you want to go is an uphill walk. The road is so bad that it takes 8 hours to reach the end of it, at Syabru Bensi, which is 100km from Kathmandu. It's not a comfortable ride, to say the least, and it requires 4-wheel drive. The road is frequently washed out from landslides in various sections.

The Child and Maternal Mortality rates of this area are higher than the national average. Nepal's average infant mortality rate, 78 deaths per 1000 live births, and average maternal mortality rate, 539 deaths per 100,000 live deliveries, are among the highest in the world. Nepal is the “deadliest place in the world to give birth outside Afghanistan and a clutch of countries in sub-Saharan Africa,” according to a 2006 report by the International Federation of the Red Cross. That’s because only about 1 in 5 births is attended by trained health personnel.

As you can see on the map attached to this article, The Mountain Fund is planning to have a series of clinics that all nicely tie into each other and provide basic healthcare to nearly the entire Rasuwa Distrcit, 44,000 people.

We are currently planning to provide medical equipment and a Certified Medical Assistant in the village of Tamboche. Tamboche is a small village which is centrally located to serve Gatlang, Chilime and Tatopani (about 4,000 people in all).

There is an existing government-run clinic in the village of Syabru Bensi, and we are planning to add one staff nurse to increase the capacity of that clinic. Syabru Bensi is centrally located between Tamboche and our existing clinic at Thulo Syabru.

We currently have a clinic located in the village of Thulo Syabru which is fully operational. This clinic serves approximately 4,000 people who live in villages scattered up and down both the Gossaikund and Langtang trekking routes.

Our new healthcare system is designed to feed into itself. Our remote health stations at Thulo Syabru and the planned one at Tamboche feed into the Syabru Bensi clinic where we'll have a nurse. From there the only road in the district goes to Kalikastan where we have a full fledged (or nearly) hospital, staffed with one doctor and one nurse. Theses three clinics, and the one anchor-hospital allow for basic healthcare to be available to the entire Rasuwa district, and portions of the bordering districts of Nuwakot and Dhading.

Timmy Dolan, of Boulder, CO, is climbing for this cause.  He has his own website HERE.

Other Rasuwa health facts:

• Existing Healthcare: One government hospital, eight government health posts and three doctors. (Government health posts suffer from chronic lack of funding and resources, are often unmanned, or lack medical supplies and medicines to provide treatment.)
• Disease in Rasuwa:

  ARI (Acute Respiratory Infection) - The under five-year age rate of incidence is 858 per 1,000

  Diarrhea - Under five-year age rate of incidence 345 per 1,000

  Malnutrition - Under five-year age rate of incidence is 60%

UNICEF info on health care in Nepal.