Posted by Dr. Sona Shilpakar
Traveling the final leg of the long journey from Kathmandu to Bayalpata hospital, from the town of Sanfe Bagar up the hill to the Hospital, was far easier than I had expected. I had heard of the road’s previous condition prior to journeying here as a volunteer public health physician. I had seen the documentary “Birth in Nepal” in which Subina Shrestha poignantly captured the heart-breaking implications of the region’s lack of infrastructure on the health of its people. The video showed a scene where the road appears to be engulfed in mud, with water rushing between the road’s crevices while the soon-to-be-mother in labor pain waits alongside the road, hoping for the vehicle to be pulled out from the mud pile. I recalled the frustrated words of Nyaya volunteer Dr. Ruma Rajbandhari: “we and the hospital are essentially cut off from any road access. No food, no medications, no fuel for the generator can get up to us”. The difference this time around: the government had pitched half of the road and had graveled the remainder.
Nyaya midwife Devsara Thapa recounted to me what the road condition was like only a year ago, when it was uneven and bumpy and covered with red soil. The road used to be dusty during the summer and muddy during the monsoon. Patients and staff members had to trudge along piles of red sludge just to get to the hospital. By the time they reached the hospital the lower halves of their bodies were stained with mud. Routinely-tracked mud prints in the emergency room made it difficult for us to maintain a clean environment in the ward throughout the season. In fact, on rainy days, and due in part to the difficulty of travel on such roads, we often saw fewer than half of the number of patients who normally sought care at the hospital.
But this spring the government pitched and graveled the road, and times have changed for the better. Nyaya Board member Chittij Basyal expressed his happiness to be able to ride in a truck on the same road where he had walked on red sludge from Sanfe Bagar to Bayalpata hospital only last year: “Trucks used to make deep tire marks on the muddy road making it difficult for small vehicles to pass as the lowest part of the vehicles and/or the wheels would get stuck in the mud.”
With the new road, Nyaya now has a better connection to the nearest bazaar in Sanfe Bagar. Additionally, and critical to our patient services, the pitched road both facilitates the movement of supplies and the operation of our ambulance to pick up patients from nearby villages. Ambulance rides are now much more comfortable and safe for patients referred from Bayalpata to other regional facilities. Despite these much-needed improvements, the overall feeling here in Achham is one of isolation from much of the economic activity of the rest of the country, and our patients and staff suffer as a result. While we eagerly await further investments in transportation, such as the completion of the East-West highway, we congratulate the government on this important success in improving access in Achham and look forward to working with the local government and communities to enhance infrastructure in the region.
good work in relation to the welfare for the poor and needful.so keep it up.best of luck