This fundraising campaign is to raise money to build a medical clinic in the village of Kyanjin Gompa in the Langtang Valley of Nepal.
In October 2018, I visited the Langtang valley with a few friends to climb some mountains and became involved in the rescue of a woman with severe cerebral oedema. She had a blood oxygen level of 30% when we arrived and with a team effort, a Gamow bag, oxygen generator set and some drugs we managed to keep her alive until the emergency doctors arrived in the helicopter in the morning and evacuated her. Thankfully she made a full recovery.
There is currently no medical clinic in Kyanjin (3900m). The closest clinic is in Mundu which is 2 hours walk down the valley. The Mundu clinic was built to replace the clinic in Langtang village that was destroyed by the earthquake in 2015. The oxygen generator was carried up by a porter from Mundu to Kyanjin during the night. The Gamow bag (Portable Altitude Chamber) was stored at a lodge in Kyanjin but only arrived 3 hours into the emergency and none of the local villagers were trained to use it.
Being such a remote and high altitude place, which has a constant stream of visitors from all over the world, it seemed likely that a similar emergency situation to what we had experienced could someday happen again. It was also possible that many Nepalese people living or travelling through the village were silently suffering from ailments that could be easily treated, yet there were no permanent facilities or people with the appropriate training who could help. We felt that having a small clinic with well-trained medics, a Gamow bag and a decent stock of medicine and equipment could have enormous benefits for this community, which depends so much on tourism for its income. Such a project might also help raise the profile of this beautiful valley, and help to provide a safety net for unacclimatised tourists who get in trouble with acute mountain sickness.
This project will be approached in three phases.
Phase 1 – Short term
Improve the availability of medical supplies within Kyanjin Gompa, leveraging the existing businesses and community leaders.
- The focus will be on providing medicine and equipment, which will help to improve the survivability of people suffering from Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS),
- Sufficient supplies of the above should be provided so as to enable 15 hours of treatment for at least 2 individuals suffering from severe AMS. This allows time for helicopter evacuation if needed, and redundancy if the supplies are used once for an emergency before the inventory can be restocked.
- Comprehensive first aid training, including AMS specific training, for at least 5 community leaders, as well as the existing medic in the Mundu clinic.
- Installation of permanent information boards in the entrance to every business, with instructions about what to do in the event of altitude sickness (in English and Nepali)
Phase 2 – medium term
- Construction of a permanent building in Kyanjin Gompa on government land, for the storage of a comprehensive inventory of medical supplies and provision of a small clinic space.
Phase 3 – long term
- Establishment of a permanent medical practice within the clinic built during phase 2.
- Rotations of government supported medics / doctors through the village.
We will work with existing non profit charities (Sustainable Steps Nepal) that have already been working in the Langtang Valley since 2015.
If you would like to Donate to the Kyanjin Health Post Project, see link below
http://www.sustainablesteps.org/initiatives/kyanjin-health-post/
Donate here
Rob Baker 