Published on : Modified :
–
Kathmandu (AFP)
A “bank” of ventilators has rented its devices to treat Covid-19 patients in intensive care from hospitals in Nepal, saving lives at low cost across the country since the start of the pandemic.
Like its neighbors in South Asia, Nepal was hit by a fierce wave of coronavirus in April and May that saturated hospitals with patients and strained stocks of drugs and medical equipment.
After the peak of 9,000 new daily cases reached in mid-May, the number of contaminations is now clearly declining, but authorities report that hospitals remain under pressure.
The poor health system in the Himalayan country of nearly 30 million people has only 840 ventilators in total, according to government data. And the majority of these devices so much needed by patients suffering from a severe form of Covid-19 are in Kathmandu, the capital.
The non-profit organization, Nepal Ventilator Services, founded by doctors, was born from this observation.
– Chronic lack –
“Nepal suffers from a chronic lack of equipment like respirators,” Bishal Dhakal, co-founder, told AFP. According to the 42-year-old doctor, Nepal would need “2,000 to 3,000” respirators to cover the needs of its entire population.
In April 2020, this former cardiac surgeon, now a general practitioner, launched his appeal for donations. The latter quickly flocked and made it possible to acquire the first twenty respirators rented by hospitals. Since then, the organization has been able to finance the acquisition of 85 respirators.
And its devices have been used to save, at a lower cost for hospitals, nearly 1,500 patients throughout the country. A respirator rents 3,000 rupees ($ 25) per day to cover maintenance and transportation of the machines.
#photo1
During the last wave of the epidemic, the Bhim public hospital in the south of the country, which had only one ventilator, “was lucky to be able to rent two more” from Nepal Ventilator Services, told AFP Shakuntala Gupta, its director.
“Our patients needed ventilators, but we did not have the budget to buy them immediately,” he explains, “especially since the administrative process to obtain approval is long”.
In Kathmandu, Karuna Hospital used eight of the organization’s ventilators this year. In mid-May, “at the time of the peak, almost all patients admitted to intensive care needed respiratory assistance,” recalls to AFP Ram Kumar Shrestha, general manager of this private hospital.
“If the + bank + of respirators had not existed, the death rate would undoubtedly have been unimaginable, not only here (in Kathmandu) but in many places in Nepal,” he said.
– “They saved us” –
In Kathmandu, Laxmi Rokaya, 29, was infected during this period. A week after the diagnosis, she began to have trouble breathing to the point that she needed assistance.
Her brother, Kunsang Magar, after running all over Kathmandu, eventually found Karuna Hospital to welcome her sister with a ventilator rented from Nepal Ventilator Services. “They saved us. I don’t know if we would have found a ventilator without them,” Magar told AFP.
Rokaya was placed on life support for two days and was able to leave the hospital a little over a week later.
#photo2
According to Mr. Dhakal, during the month of May, all respirators in his organization were constantly used by hospitals across the country. Nepal has officially recorded nearly 630,000 contaminations and more than 8,900 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Today, the second wave is gradually fading but the authorities are already anticipating the next one. So Mr. Dhakal is trying to increase his supply of respirators and organize the training of new staff to operate them.
“Hospitals come to us to look for equipment responding to an emergency situation but which they probably do not need in the long term,” he underlines.
His organization has only one goal, he says, “to give the population access to the care they need”.
© 2021 AFP
–
