Working towards Health Equity and Access in Rural Nepal
Posted in Logistics and Management, Social Justice and Health on Dec 25th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru There is a new HIV diagnosis in the outpatient department for a man whose wife is dead, an infant in respiratory distress in the emergency department, an inpatient unit whose patients seem to be bathing in flies. Another child in the emergency department fell on her elbow from a few feet [...]
Posted in Patient Stories, Social Justice and Health on Dec 24th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru “We’re just going for a walk down the hill.” As he passed by me, I saw a sense of pride and almost playfulness in the father’s eyes. He seemed to relish going for a walk with his daughter on a beautiful spring day in Achham. I had met his daughter, sixteen [...]
Posted in Clinic Staff, Logistics and Management, Social Justice and Health on Dec 23rd, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru We had engaging x-ray rounds today at Bayalpata Hospital. On rounds the day before, we had been frustrated by the inefficiency and low quality of reading x-rays at the patient’s bedside without a viewbox. Viewing x-rays at the bedside also did not afford us an opportunity to give meaningful feedback to [...]
Posted in Patient Stories, Social Justice and Health on Dec 20th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru This week, a 70-year-old woman with emphysema and heart failure was admitted to Bayalpata Hospital with shortness of breath and limited ability to walk, likely related to heart failure. She had murmurs indicative of aortic and tricuspid valve insufficiency. Based on an echocardiogram (ultrasound) performed by our Health Assistant Uday Kshatriya [...]
Posted in Clinic Staff, Social Justice and Health on Dec 18th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru As I wrote in a recent tumblr post, it was wonderful to walk again through the halls of Bayalpata and to witness its continued transformation into a dignified hospital. Over the course of ten months since my last trip, nearly every part of the hospital has been better organized and cleaned, [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management on Dec 16th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru In September of 2011, Bayalpata Hospital in rural Achham, Nepal almost collapsed under the weight of its own staff discontent. The hospital, a government facility, had been largely abandoned until 2009 when our organization Nyaya Health endeavored to open it in partnership with local and national authorities. Since then the hospital [...]
Posted in Logistics and Management, Social Justice and Health on Dec 14th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru She arrived walking, her sandals dusty. Her small heart, failing her, literally bounding out of her chest, somehow carried her three hours from her village and up the mountain to our small hospital in remote Achham, Nepal. I first saw her after being called by Chanakya Timilsina, our Health Assistant, who [...]
Posted in News on Dec 5th, 2011
Posted by Duncan Maru Our Country Director and I had the honor of visiting Dhulikhel Hospital this week to meet with staff members and Administrative Director, Dr. Rajendra Koju. Dhulikhel is a not-for-profit, non-governmental hospital that offers affordable prices to its patients and manifests a singular vision of high quality and equitable care in rural Nepal, representing much of [...]
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 [...]