Q: How else are you helping people affected by the virus?

Research shows that about 80% of patients with COVID-19 can stay at home to recover without requiring hospital care.  Nepal only has about 2,000 ICU beds and less than 700 ventilators, which is not nearly enough for all the people testing positive with COVID. Also, much of the population lives in rural areas without easy access to medical care. So we were trying to figure out the best way to keep infected people safe and comfortable at home. We came up with the idea of creating home isolation kits that contain items like paracetamol (also known as acetaminophen) to bring down a fever, cough syrup, rehydration fluid, surgical masks, sanitizer, soap, a thermometer, and instructions on what to expect when you’re sick with COVID and how to take care of yourself. The kit also contains a pulse oximeter that allows people to measure their own oxygen levels.

Q: How do people get the kits?

Through HAPSA Nepal, we have raised over $51,000 to fund the creation and distribution of the kits, and we’ve made them available to more than 2,000 families in 21 municipalities across the country. The pulse oximeter drives up the costs of the kits, but it’s such a key item to help people either feel reassured that they can stay at home or that they need professional help. Previously, many of Nepal’s health centers didn’t have any of their own. We are building the capacity for the local governments to be able to distribute the pulse oximeters to families in their area who need them. As part of this project, when the pandemic ends, the municipalities are supposed to collect the pulse oximeters and bring them to the health centers to build the institution’s stock. The other day, our volunteers made 600 home isolation kits. Our group, COVID Alliance Nepal, also runs a free hotline staffed by doctors who we trained to advise people who have questions about COVID. That was quite busy in the beginning of the pandemic and is still active. The home isolation kits program is fully donation-based through a GoFundMe campaign.

Q: How successful has the COVID-19 vaccine rollout been in Nepal?

Though available data varies, Nepal has vaccinated about 7% of its population with at least one dose. This is one of the lowest numbers in the world. Nepal has a really good vaccine delivery infrastructure from years of vaccine campaign experiences, but the country just has not gotten the vaccines. There's such a large inequity with global vaccine distribution. I don’t want Nepal to be in India’s shadow when it comes to receiving vaccines. We are working on advocacy through many fronts. In mid-April, a group of Nepali professionals inside and outside the country came together to form a group called COVID Alliance Nepal. We wrote a letter to the U.S. ambassador to Nepal asking for more assistance; we sent a letter with 50,000 signatures to President Biden; we organized a massive phone campaign to American government officials to increase vaccine aid for this country. We received word that two senators specifically mentioned in a hearing that they had received a lot of calls about Nepal. President Biden recently announced that the U.S. would be sending COVID-19 vaccines to Asian countries; we’re waiting to find out how many will be sent specifically to Nepal. So I’m happy that Nepal is now on the radar.

Q: What is the nature of the project that brought you to Nepal in the first place?

My primary research interest is advancing emergency care in Nepal. The field is in its infancy here — even in America, emergency medicine has only been around since the 1960s — and there’s a real need for it. My plan was to research emergency medicine at seven different hospitals and, using a tool from the World Health Organization, assess the current state of emergency care here. Fortunately, we’d been planning this for months, and we had local research assistants here who were able to do some of the advance work. I hit the ground running as soon as I arrived and we were able to study five of the hospitals right away, and then I finished the other two a few days ago. This work is partially funded through a grant from Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies — I was only supposed to be in Nepal for two months, but the Brown global division was super supportive in terms of flexibility. I’m now supposed to resume my clinical work at Miriam Hospital in July.