Taking wealth out of health
Nepal’s medical industrial complex has modernised healthcare in the country, but it has also pushed treatment out of reach of most citizens.
Collusion between politicians and medical magnates has made it so expensive to become a doctor that it has set off a chain reaction to make hospital treatment unaffordable.
Meanwhile, government hospitals are under-funded, under-staffed and under-motivated. Most medical personnel in district hospitals and health posts moonlight in private clinics, and patient treatment is substandard.
Desperate families have to sell property, jewelry and other assets to afford private treatment, pushing even some middle-class families below the poverty line.
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But there are notable examples of government hospitals that are running well because of various models of partnership with non-profits, foundations and charities. They prove that affordable high quality healthcare is possible, and those hospitals need not be so expensive to run.
There is Dhulikhel Hospital which has a tiny registration fee, treatment is low cost, an insurance scheme pays for most treatment, and patients are charged according to their capacity to pay. Despite being a government hospital, Dhulikhel has upheld a consistently high standard of care and treatment.
United Mission to Nepal has run a hospital in Tansen for over 60 years, a community hospital in Okhaldhunga, and was till recently managing Patan Hospital, providing high quality care at low cost to patients.
Other public-private partnership institutions that could be models to be replicated across Nepal include:
Bayalpata Hospital
After Bayalpata Hospital was established in Achham 20 years ago, for many years it did not have a single doctor. Treatment was so poor that even emergency cases had to be taken on a grueling 12 hour drive down to Dhangadi.
In those days HIV tagged along with the migrant workers returning from India, and there was a full-blown AIDS and TB epidemic in Achham and other district in Far Western Nepal. The mortality rate, already very high among women and children, soared.
In 2009, Nepali and American medical students inspired by the community health model of Paul Farmer set up Nyaya Health Nepal (formerly Possible) taking over Bayalpata under a public-private partnership with the government.
Since then, Bayalpata Hospital has upgraded its facilities (left) and treated nearly 1.5 million patients for free, some of them for complicated caesarian and orthopedic surgeries.
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Up to 100,000 patients from Achham and surrounding districts come to Bayalpata because they get free treatment there, and many families have saved themselves from sinking into poverty.
Bayalpata also runs a network of community health centres with an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system that digitally keeps track of all patients in the catchment area. The presence of just this one hospital has improved the health parameters of surrounding districts, bringing down the maternal and child mortality rates. Achham once had the highest maternal mortality rate in Nepal, today institutional deliveries make up 90% of total deliveries, and very few women die at childbirth.
“We have a simple objective: to show that providing free and high quality treatment to the most underserved area of the country is possible at a very low cost,” explains Srijana Devkota of Nyaya Health Nepal.
Once fully funded by international foundations to run hospitals in Bayalpata and Charikot, NHN now provides free medical treatment in Achham for just Rs200 million a year, of which half now comes from the Sudurpaschim Province and local municipality.
+977 - 4100517
https://www.nyayahealthnepal.org/
Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre
The Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre (SIRC) in Banepa is a public-private partnership providing treatment and rehabilitation to people with spinal injuries. It was started by journalist and civil rights activist Kanak Mani Dixit after his miraculous survival and recovery in a trekking accident in 2000 along the Annapurna Circuit that damaged his spinal cord.
SIRC now helps rehabilitate up to 100 spinally injured patients a year, and the numbers are going up every year due to injuries sustained in highway accidents and falls from trees and cliffs. The facility was located in Banepa because of its proximity to highways and nearby trauma centres. The hospital has also been providing community treatment and tele-rehabilitation services for follow-ups.
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The hospital has medical officers, urologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nursing care, prosthetics, orthotics, psychologists and consultants. Those who cannot afford to pay are still treated for free, others are charged the same rate as Bir Hospital.
“Because patients often have to stay for more than five months, it may be difficult for them to afford the cost, so we charge them according to their capacity to pay,” says SIRC’s Raju Dhakal.
SIRC’s annual running cost is Rs50 million, of which most comes from grants by non-profits and other fund-raising activities. The government also chips in with a budget for the physical construction and equipment as well as occasional allocations to cover budget shortfalls.
infosirc@wlink.com.np, spinalnepal@gmail.com
Charikot Primary Health Centre
The 2015 earthquake damaged Charikot Primary Health Centre along with 98% of the medical facilities in Dolakha district. But the disaster was a blessing in disguise for the Charikot centre. It was rebuilt and upgraded to a full-scale 50-bed hospital and managed first by Médecins Sans Frontières and then by the non-profit Nyaya Health Nepal (NHN). Residents of Dolakha did not have to make expensive journeys to Kathmandu because medical treatment was available for free at Charikot.
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In 2020, NHN handed over management of the hospital to Bagmati Province and Bhimeshwor Municipality which now run the facility with low cost treatment for up to 300 patients a day. The Charikot experiment has been hailed as a model for successful transfer by a private non-profit to the local government, and it has been running well despite the presence of two private hospitals in Charikot.
“It has been a seamless handover from Nyaya Health to the government, and the level of care and treatment is the same,” says chief physician Binod Dangal. “We perform caesarean sections, orthopedics, telemedicine, free check-ups for the elderly, children and pregnant women, mental health counselling, and chronic illness monitoring.”
+977 49 421125
Sagarmatha Chaudhary Eye Hospital
For the past 30 years, the Sagarmatha Chaudhary Eye Hospital in Lahan of Siraha district has been providing the cheapest cataract surgery in the world for just Rs1,200 per operation.
Thirty years ago when the hospital started, it had only 12 beds. It now treats 470,000 people every year with patients coming in from as far away as southern India and Bangladesh, and they pay the same amount as Nepalis. Just in the last three years, the eye hospital has treated 321,000 foreign nationals.
“It is possible to provide the services at an affordable cost because we are a non-profit, and have an economy of scale,” explains Abhishek Roshan of Sagarmatha Chaudhary Eye Hospital.
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The hospital has also set up 15 eye care centres throughout the district, and takes treatment directly to the people so they do not have to make the journey to Lahan. It has a separate department for paediatric services, care for newborn babies with vision problems. In 2021 alone, it performed 1,170 eye surgeries on children.
Apart from providing treatment of retina, cornea, glaucoma, oculoplasty, the hospital also serves as an international research centre, collaborating with institutions like The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The hospital subsidises its eye treatment for patients with revenue from its agribusiness ventures. A part of the hospital’s land is dedicated to fish farming, and an orchard for litchi and mangoes, as well as a bamboo grove.
“Income from those ventures help us keep the cost of treatment down,” says Roshan. The hospital is also supported by Christian Blind Mission (CBM), the European Commission and Arvis.
+977-33- 560080
https://www.erec-p.org/sagarmatha
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