PHASE Nepal works in some of the most remote and isolated Himalayan mountain villages in Nepal, providing lifesaving, highly integrated services and resources to men, women and children each and every day.
These villages can take up to seven days walking from the nearest road to reach, and are often neglected by other health and development organizations for being too difficult or expensive to support.
The GoPhil community has joined together to provide salary support for a health supervisor, responsible for overseeing and training frontline health staff in 3 of PHASE’s highly remote centers, and for an auxiliary nurse midwife, who acts as the first point of contact for any health-related emergencies, for a village of up to 4,000 people.
The numbers of people supported by these and other PHASE staff members between January and June 2019 are staggering:
- 2,065 patients were treated in three rural districts, including 504 children below the age of 5;
- 527 awareness-raising activities were conducted, reaching 5,568 community members;
- 1,030 children received growth monitoring and the 56 found to be underweight received treatment and family nutritional counseling;
- 212 couples benefitted from preventative family planning sessions;
- 172 women received antenatal care, 74 babies were safely delivered, and 72 families received postnatal care, including newborn examinations.
These numbers are overwhelming, but the impact on each individual, family and community helped by PHASE is enormous. As an example, one mother of five children was pregnant for the thirteenth time and delivered the baby on her own in her home. Unfortunately, there were health complications and the mother started bleeding excessively.
Fortunately, the family knew about PHASE from their outreach activities and brought the mother in to be looked at by the locally-based auxiliary nurse midwife. She checked the mother’s vitals, diagnosed the problem as a retained placenta, and began treatment. Eventually, she knew more advanced care was needed and coordinated for a government-funded emergency airlift to transport the mother to the closest regional hospital. The mother returned to her family two weeks later, looking happy and fully recovered. This mother’s life was likely saved because PHASE was there to spot the problem and arrange to transport her to the help she needed, just in time.
One reason PHASE is able to accomplish so much is their commitment to close collaboration and cooperation with local, government-run health officials and facilities. In many cases, the government allocates funding to help rural communities, but lacks the skilled staff and capacity to actually reach those communities and deliver or connect them with services. This is where the PHASE health workers step in and act as a trusted liaison between the government and the most isolated community members.
Much of the transformational, life-saving work by PHASE in rural Nepal would not be possible without the GoPhil community’s compassion, trust and investment.