Every time you get into a vehicle around here, you’re taking a risk.  How big of a risk depends on a number of factors – night driving, weather, fog, condition of the road itself,  intoxicated drivers, etc.  Four days ago, we had a reminder of just how treacherous travel can be on the mountain roads leading to and from our hospital.  A couple districts away a bus accident took place, with 28 people injured and 8 dead.  24 of the injured were treated at our hospital.   We received word of the accident at around 9:30am, but because of the remoteness [...]

Dr. Josh Campbell, an oral-maxillofacial surgeon from Tennessee, USA, volunteered at HDCS-TEAM Hospital in February 2011.   An article about his trip appeared in a supplement to the Knoxville News Sentinel.  Read the article here.

Dr. Jeremy was on call.  To call it a rough night would be an understatement.  In addition to a few relatively routine cases, a beloved elderly man who is the father of one of our staff passed away.  Two patients came in each with a pneumothorax (collapsed lung), a condition that requires the insertion of a chest tube.  And then a woman came in after having tried to push her baby out for over 24 hours with no success.  This was to prove the most difficult case of the night. We learned that this was this woman’s seventh pregnancy, but [...]

March 25th was World TB Day, and 5k Race Day in Dadeldhura! Tuberculosis is a huge issue in Nepal, and Dadeldhura is certainly no exception.  40% of the Nepali population is infected with latent TB (carrying the bacteria without having any symptoms), and nearly every day in our hospital a new case of active disease is diagnosed.  Additionally, multidrug resistant TB (MDR TB) is on the rise.  Treating TB is a challenge, to be sure.  Because of the high burden of disease and expense of treatment, latent TB is not treated in Nepal.  A routine case of active TB in [...]