Early on Friday 10th May our team of 11 headed off from Kathmandu in an electric minibus for the long drive to Balamchour in Lamjung in readiness for our eye and dental camp on the Saturday. Heavy rains the night before we left, added to appalling road conditions due to road widening works most of the way, lead to many delays, the longest being 4 hours stuck going nowhere just outside Galchi, a mere 37km from the western edge of the Kathmandu Valley! We eventually picked up the last two members of our team, our two eye doctors, from Beshisahar much later than anticipated and headed on to Khudi, where we unloaded the bus and reloaded into two local jeeps for the steep rocky ascent to Balamchour, our home for the weekend. 12+ hours later we finally arrived in the village at around 8pm, met our host families, had evening daal bhat and headed to bed, ready for an early start the next morning.
As it the norm with our health camps, we were up with the cockerels so we could walk down to the local secondary school, the venue for the camp and start setting up for the day. As always, patients were already eagerly awaiting our arrival, despite it being only 7:30am! We made the decision to stagger our breakfasts so we could get cracking as we knew the line would only get longer as the day progressed.
Once registered an in possession of their registration slip, everyone had their blood pressure taken and for those over 50, their blood sugar levels as well.
Once seen by the health assistants, everyone headed to the respective eye or dental rooms to await their turn to see the doctors.
We had a tremendous turnout throughout the day with 486 patients registering to be seen. Given its rural location and limited access to quality health care, we had an extraordinarily high turn out of older people, with those 70 years or older accounting for 18% of our patients and with an age range from 6 years old to 93 years old!
Despite the long waiting times, and what seemed to be endless queues, the atmosphere was light and almost carnivalesque, as everyone leant into the day, treated it as a holiday and an opportunity to catch up with old friends and the local news.
After such a big uptake for dental appointments at last year’s camp, we added an extra dentist this year and our team of 4 worked around the clock, finally finishing as the sun was setting. They saw a total of 120 people of all ages, extracting teeth from 50% of them, the most being 3 from one patient!
People’s oral hygiene was extremely poor across all ages and most of the children had early childhood caries with decay across most of their teeth. Even as the children were sitting waiting to see the dentists, they were eating sweets and drinking sugary drinks without a thought about what they were doing, who they were waiting to see and why they needed to visit the dentist. Education is a large part of our health camps and so a couple of the student volunteers spent time discussing the whens, how’s and why fors of good dental hygiene with those waiting in line, in the hope of getting them to understand why oral hygiene is so important.
As well as extracting teeth from 60 patients, they performed scaling and polishing on 34 patients, restored 20 teeth and provided fluoride varnish application for 2 children to protect their teeth. They also referred 15 patients for root canal treatment, which unfortunately they were not able to perform as it requires more than one visit. Everyone who visited the dentists left with a new toothbrush and an understanding of how and when to use it.
Our two eye doctors, Subash and Nabin, supported by the local community health volunteers were equally busy as poor vision is commonplace in rural locations, as particularly the older generations grew up with no electricity and so eye strain from working in dimly lit and often smokey environments was part of their every day lives.
First up were the visual acuity tests, where it was established how much or little sight the patients had in each eye.
From here they moved to see the eye doctors for a full assessment of their visionary needs, if any. Our doctors saw 365 patients; 10 cases of conjunctivitis; gave out 122 sets of free reading glasses; referred 3 patients for follow-up care in Besisahar, a good 2 hour bus ride away and referred 16 for cataract surgery, which will happen in Kathmandu on the 30th May.
As always, a Himalayan thank you to everyone who helped make this camp the success it was. Our amazing donors One World One Heart Foundation, Parke, Ryan and the boys from Telluride, Collorado and Katie Birchell, from Tavistock, Devon without whom we wouldn’t be able to bring such invaluable health care to rural Nepali communities. Our wonderful clients from last year, Morgan, Laurinda, Brack and Rebecca from Colorado who kindly provided the toothbrushes and toothpaste. Our eye doctors from Bharatpur Eye Hospital, Drs Subash, and Nabin. Our dentists, Drs Ashok, Sony, Shristi and Ashmita from Dulkihel Hospital, Department of Community & Public Heath Dentistry. The Simpani health post staff and community health volunteers; Ganesh Ma. Vi, the school for providing the venue and some volunteers; our warm and welcoming host families in Balamchour and of course, our own HQF team Alisha, Pragati, Ginisha and Anya, headed up by our Programme Manager, Hari.
