Achham, Nepal

For the people of Acham, Nepal, basic healthcare was virtually non-existent until seven years ago  when a group of Yale medical students in the College of Public Health founded their own non-profit, called Possible (www.possibleheatlh.org) and helped to renovate Bayalpata Hospital, the district’s only hospital.  Since then, more than 220,000 patients of Nepal’s rural poor have been treated to high quality, low-cost healthcare. 

Even with those upgrades, the region was still lacking in some of the basic equipment necessary to make possible diagnoses that we take for granted.  Through the donation of a Carestream Computed Radiography System (CR) from local Rotary Clubs, those life-saving reviews are now possible.

With the new system, X-rays generated by a SEDECAL World Health Imaging System for Radiology (WHIS-RAD) are converted to digital images. This eliminates the cost of film and chemicals, provides immediate presentation of images for diagnoses, enables electronic archiving and distribution throughout the hospital, and allows the team to consult with doctors across the globe.

Since receiving the Computed Radiography system Possible reports that at Bayalpata Hospital x-rays are viewable throughout the outpatient, inpatient, and emergency departments. This enables far more organized, timely, and efficient care for patients suffering from a range of conditions including pneumonia, heart failure, and bone fractures.

“There were many challenges to the project”, according to Park Ridge Rotarian John Vanden Brink, who led the local team.  Defining the appropriate technology and vendor, finding International Partners, raising the funds, finding the Host club in Nepal, writing the proposal, meeting a March deadline and working with the local distributor were the major ones. All of this took time, team effort and many E-mails locally and to the other side of the world.”

The project was a joint venture between the Park Ridge, Libertyville Morning, and Wilmette Rotary Clubs as International Partners and the Madhyapur Rotary Club in Nepal as the site host. Matching funds were also provided by Rotary District 6440 and The Rotary Foundation, headquartered in Evanston, IL.

With the help of the Rotary Club of Madhyapur, Nepal, the proposal was completed, the equipment ordered and shipped to the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu.  The final leg took the CR system and Host Club Rotary Members on a 28 hour journey to Bayalpata Hospital in Achham Province, Nepal.  The region, which is nearly 600 miles from Kathmandu, is only accessible with 4-wheel drive vehicles.

The system was installed last summer in a hand-off ceremony and became operational at the end of 2014.  The most recent report from Possible are that the system is working well and that the image distribution will be incorporated into the patient centered electronic medical record (EMR) now being installed.