Working towards Health Equity and Access in Rural Nepal
Posted in Patient Stories, Social Justice and Health on Nov 13th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru [This poem was written by Duncan Maru, co-founder and President of Nyaya Health.] You have come to me for a busted toe, an accident, you say. Dressed in your loose black shirt with a large Christian cross on it, grey sagging sweat pants. Your face, round, youthful, inquisitive, impresses [...]
Posted in Social Justice and Health on Oct 30th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Our wonderful collaborator, Selwyn Rogers at the Center for Surgery and Public Health, and I presented our surgical implementation science protocol at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School recently. The slides for the talk are available here: We received some excellent and insightful feedback from a room full of about 25 [...]
Posted in Mortality Reviews, News, Social Justice and Health on Oct 1st, 2011
Posted by Ryan Schwarz Over the last two years Nyaya has spearheaded a Morbidity and Mortality Conference (M&M), which aims to provide a venue for Bayalpata Hospital’s clinical staff to critically reflect on and evaluate serious illnesses and deaths that occur. The effort is aimed at improving the quality of the care we offer, particularly [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management, Social Justice and Health on Sep 8th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru I have recently written about the problems we have had in getting consistent, high-quality data from Achham. I will not re-hash here the logistical problems we have had in getting data, but suffice it to say that, despite being an organization populated by a solid number of very data-minded individuals, a [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management on Aug 21st, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru In a speech recently on his government’s funding of the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunizations, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s delivered some welcome statements about the importance of transparency in global development aid [1]. Notably, all recipients of British foreign aid “must publish what they do, where they get their [...]
Posted in Social Justice and Health on Jul 16th, 2011
Posted by Ryan Schwarz President and Co-founder of Nyaya Health Duncan Maru spoke recently at the Harvard Kennedy School about Nyaya’s work and challenges moving forward. Following his talk there was a panel discussion with Ryan Schwarz, Nyaya’s Director of Operations, and Bibhav Acharya, Nyaya’s Executive Vice-President. You can view Duncan’s talk here: ———————- Ryan [...]
Posted in Patient Stories, Social Justice and Health on Jul 8th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Recently, a 17 year old man fell about 10 meters from a tree, sustaining fatal injuries. After three hours in transit, he was brought almost certainly dead on arrival by our ambulance. Our medical team performed basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation on this gentleman, though we were sadly unable to bring him back [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management on Jun 19th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru As I’ve discussed in another thread, email forms a central aspect of the modern work life for many; as I cited in that post, in one study among British white-collar workers, a full 55 work-days per worker are spent on email. So, there should be a way to ensure that the [...]
Posted in Patient Stories, Social Justice and Health on Jun 10th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Recently, Dr. Bikash visited one of his patients with tuberculosis who did not make it to the hospital for his scheduled visit. He needed adherence counseling, an HIV test, and sputum investigation. Fortunately, he lives within an hour of the hospital. After outpatient clinic, Dr. Bikash and I motorbiked and walked [...]
Posted in Social Justice and Health on Jun 7th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Since starting services at the Sanfe Clinic, Nyaya Health has been planning for the ultimate day when we would start surgical services. Now, nearly two years into services at Bayalpata Hospital, we are making preparations to take that next step. Concurrently, Nyaya Health has been developing the basic infrastructure necessary to [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management on May 31st, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Access to organizational documents are a key aspect of transparency. Overall, Nyaya has done a solid job documenting what we do so that our staff, leadership team, and volunteers are able to access the “institutional memory” needed to get work done. We’ve had a hodge-podge of a system in accomplishing this, [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management on May 25th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru “Duita bihana ma, Duita sanjh ko, la”. In counseling patients on how to take their medicines, the Bayalpata Hospital pharmacist Raviman Kunwar has the cadence of a Kathmandu micro-bus helper calling out to passengers to get on board, or an auctioneer selling his wares. At twenty-one years old, complete with stylish [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management, Social Justice and Health on May 22nd, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Much has been written and talked about with regards to the need for organizations, corporations, and governments to operate more transparently. The non-profit sector is particularly problematic, as the Global Accountability Report has made clear. Nyaya Health for our part has long held an organizational mandate of transparent operations. Operationalizing transparency [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management on May 5th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Electricity is a central component to healthcare delivery, and where we work in Achham getting reliable energy is a challenge. I am hoping that this post will serve as a “before” snapshot at our energy system prior to the installation of our new solar system. We start at the single phase [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management on Apr 26th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Data management is a core process of any healthcare operation. Nyaya Health has a central mission of using data to drive our services, evaluate our outcomes, and to disseminate our work to others. We have published papers and have extensive data uploaded to our wiki. Our data management program has a [...]