Highlights
- COVID-19 cases in Nepal are rising at a rate faster than that in India
- Porus border between the two countries has contributed to the community spread
- Public healthcare system is underprepared to tackle this crisis, warn experts
On 25 April, the former king of Nepal Gyanendra Shah and his wife Komal Shah and their daughter Prerana tested positive for COVID-19 and were rushed to a top Hospital for treatment.
The Shah couple had just returned from India after participating at the Kumbh Mela, attended by millions of Hindu devotees.
Due to its open borders with India, the rate of COVID-19 infection is rising in Nepal too.
Thousands of migrant workers are returning to Nepal from India.
The COVID-19 situation is becoming alarming in the entire South Asian region.
In a , UNICEF said, “the scenes we are witnessing in South Asia are unlike anything our region has seen before. Family members of patients are pleading for help as the region reels under an acute shortage of medical-grade oxygen. Exhausted health workers are being pushed to the brink of collapse. We are faced with a real possibility that our health systems will be strained to a breaking point – leading to even more loss of life.”
Indian holy men, or Naga Sadhus, attend the Kumbh Mela at Haridwar, India on 14 April. Source: EPA
COVID-19 is taking its toll on Nepal at an alarming rate, as the number of deaths this week has surged to more than 50 per day.
The daily is averaging more than 8,000.
The shortage of hospital beds, health personnel and oxygen cylinders all over the country continues to rise. As of now, all of the 8,982 beds in government hospitals are occupied and they are turning away many new patients.
A Nepali man waits for a bus to return to his village a day before the lockdown in Kathmandu on 28 April. Source: AP
Out of 185 hospitals in Nepal, only 25 have oxygen plants of their own and many patients in other hospitals are suffering.
When asked how such a crisis came about in Nepal, public health expert Dr Rita Thapa says, “the people who had been entering Nepal from India were not properly screened for coronavirus. Hence, infected individuals went back to their communities and the infection spread. We should have had holding centres with proper food and facilities for the infected people at border points. But our helpdesks exist only for the sake of formality.”
A COVID-19 patient is given oxygen in a hospital corridor in Kathmandu on May 5. Source: AP
Out on the streets, fear seems to rule as the busy roads have become vacant after a lockdown was declared in Kathmandu on 29 April which have been extended for until next week.
Many regions of the country followed suit.
Cities and highly-populated regions of the country were locked down.
Twenty-two of Nepal's land border points with India are currently closed while 13 remain open. Nepal’s domestic and international flights have also been grounded.
Vacant road in the tourist city of Pokhara in Nepal. Source: RSS
Despite these recent measures, studies show that the virus is spreading faster in Nepal than in India.
Compared to India's infection rate of 1.39, the infection is in Nepal, which means that every infected person is spreading it to two people on average.
Almost half of those getting tested are testing positive.
In capital Kathmandu, Pashupatinath Temple’s cremation management office – the only place in the city where the last rites of Hindus are performed – was forced to take drastic measures to manage a large number of cremations in a single day.
Only two of the three incineration devices in the crematorium are currently working. To meet this shortfall, the army had to set up funeral pyres at the banks of the nearby Bagmati river to perform last rites in a traditional manner.
Likewise, vaccination programmes have been consistently questioned due to their inadequacies to reach out to the entire population. The government has been facing a challenge reaching out to all those who had taken the first dose of the vaccines.
Makeshift funeral sites have been established along the banks of Bagmati river in Kathmandu. Source: RSS
Only 362,001 amongst the 2,091,511 who took the first dose have taken the second dose.
Till now, India has donated 1 million vaccines to Nepal whereas China has donated 800,000. The government is attempting to buy more vaccines from the Serum Institute of India.
But according to Minister for Health and Population Hridayesh Tripathi, the bid was unsuccessful as middlemen demand commissions.
Chinese Ambassador in Nepal Hou Yanqi hands over 800,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Nepal health minister Hridayesh Tripathi in Kathmandu. Source: RSS
Currently, the government is in talks with countries like Russia, China and the UN Covax program for more doses of vaccines, but nothing conclusive has come out of it yet.
Approximately 2 million people in Nepal have been vaccinated against the virus so far, which is less than 7 per cent of its population.
A week ago, the Ministry of Health and Population published an appeal to its citizens, which was seen as the government giving up on the situation.
An elderly couple shows their vaccine cards after receiving a dose of COVID-19 vaccine at Korean Hospital in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Source: EPA/NARENDRA SHRESTHA via AAP
“The spread of the coronavirus is becoming hard to control and has now crossed our limits to provide beds at hospitals for everyone infected. Hence, we request all Nepali brothers and sisters to act upon the situation with sensitivity,” said a statement on 30 April.
This drew large-scale criticism by the public, seen as an excuse made by the government to shirk its responsibility.
Meanwhile, Nepal's health system is getting overwhelmed, but there is discrimination when it comes to access for the privileged and the general public.
Nepal army personnel unload the body of a person who died of COVID-19 in Kathmandu. Source: EPA/NARENDRA SHRESTHA via AAP
High profile individuals like the Shah family and top Unified Marxist-Leninist party leader Jhalanath Khanal have been receiving intensive care at expensive private hospitals while the general public are not even getting beds, medical attention and medical facilities like ventilators and oxygen supply.
Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli has asked retired health personnel to rejoin duty for a year on contract, but it is yet to be seen how many will take up the offer and help ease the extreme crunch of health personnel during this crisis.
Despite the government’s failure to ensure healthcare for the general public, it has been defending its actions and making ambitious promises for the future.
Nepal's Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. Source: RSS
In a recent address to the nation, Prime Minister Oli said, “our health system is operating at its maximum capacity to provide service to our citizens. Thousand-bed hospitals will be built in each province and in the capital by the army within a year.”
He also mentioned that the government will acquire hundreds of new intensive care unit, high dependency unit beds and ventilators.
However, people are finding this hard to believe.
“Our prime minister speaks well, but the implementation of his promises is weak. The main cause of this situation is our mismanagement. The first wave of the coronavirus had given us an opportunity to learn about how to deal with this disease last year. But we failed to institutionalise that knowledge and experience,” commented Dr Thapa.
