On the homeward stretch in Banepa

A few days have passed since I wrote. It has been very busy at the Scheer Hospital where we are based. You would also have read that a few of the team, including myself, travelled to the far west of Nepal to look at another remote hospital. We are evaluating whether we could start up another project base.

We have been inundated with women wanting our help and we only have two operating days to go. It looks like we will be operating on a total of 80 patients. The need continues to outweigh what we can possibly complete in our visit. Those that miss out will be registered and we hope they will be able to have surgery in the near future, through other visiting teams.

We are operating on a lady later today who had a 4th degree tear ten years ago that was not repaired (in simple terms a tear that occurs at delivery that extends through to the back passage). As a result she has dealt with faecal incontinence ever since. We are not sure what we will be able to do yet to help her, but our experienced, compassionate surgeons will ensure she gets the bestresult possible. This is another heart-breaking story of the reality of women’s health here in Nepal.

Another happy story is Bindu Tamang who is 53 years old. She had four pregnancies, with all her babies born at home. Out of many histories we have takenthis year, lessthan 10women had given birth in a hospital, and that might have been only for one of their babies. As too frequently happens here, two of Bundu’s babiesdied during birth.She had a hysterectomy for uterine prolapse several years ago and presented to our team with a major prolapse of her bladder. She was operated on by our urologist Dr Ken Vaux, and we are hopeful of a good result. She will probably have to stay in hospitalafter we leave as her bladder needs to be “trained”.

I felt very lucky to have Dr Leon Clark put his hand up, and be interested volunteering with us in Nepal. Open Heart International is part of Adventist HealthCare Limited, and Leon is the CEO of Adventist HealthCare Limited. A gynaecologist in a former life prior to his hospital administration and leadership roles, it has been a privilege to have Leon come with us this year. I have asked him to write something for our blog so you can look forward to reading that later on.

A very important person here at the hospital is Pralhad Sharma. He is responsible for the coordination of our program at theScheer Memorial Hospital. He finds the patients for us and arranges for their transport, accommodation and food, makes sure they come for surgery on time and takes phone calls from us and the patients 24 hours a day. He also looks after all our team needs while we are here – arranging our transport, interpreting and many, many other things. When no teams are at the hospital Pralhad is a valued member of the operating theatre scrub staff. On top of all this, he we a really nice person and we are very lucky to work with him! Thank you Pralhad for looking after us – we cannot do it without you!