Doctors for Nepal

Doctors for Nepal helps to improve healthcare in rural Nepal by providing scholarships to under-privileged medical and nursing students from impoverished backgrounds, supporting them while working in isolated rural Nepal after graduation, funding their further training, and supporting rural healthcare projects. Once qualified, the students are contracted to return to a rural region of Nepal for between two and four years, to provide vital medical care to isolated communities. Much of rural Nepal has fewer than 1 doctor per 100,000 population and people can walk for days over some of the world's most challenging terrain to reach basic healthcare. The standard of healthcare in rural Nepa... read more Doctors for Nepal helps to improve healthcare in rural Nepal by providing scholarships to under-privileged medical and nursing students from impoverished backgrounds, supporting them while working in isolated rural Nepal after graduation, funding their further training, and supporting rural healthcare projects. Once qualified, the students are contracted to return to a rural region of Nepal for between two and four years, to provide vital medical care to isolated communities. Much of rural Nepal has fewer than 1 doctor per 100,000 population and people can walk for days over some of the world's most challenging terrain to reach basic healthcare. The standard of healthcare in rural Nepal is far below that of urban areas . We believe that by training students from rural areas in community-based medicine, we can raise the standards of medical care in such areas. We provide scholarships at Patan Academy of Health Sciences in Kathmandu, a college that specifically trains doctors and nurses to work in rural community medicine. The students are carefully selected by the college and us, and after graduation they are contracted to work for two to four years in remote rural areas before receiving their final graduation certificate. The students are selected from underprivileged backgrounds and the most socio-economically deprived areas of Nepal. An average rural family's income is far below that required to support a student through their studies, and Nepal therefore has difficulty retaining and recruiting from remote areas. By training students from such communities, they are empowered to go back to serve their own people; they have a unique understanding of the local cultural nuances, which allows them to integrate into local communities and provide more effective and comprehensive care. By this approach we aim to not just change the lives of single students, but to improve medical and nursing care for thousands of patients in rural Nepal.