Medical Centres in Nepal

SOS Medical Centre Bardiya

The SOS Medical Centre in Bardiya (Surkhet), as in the previous years, continued to provide the indispensable and basic health services to the poor and underprivileged community people - children and mothers in particular. Besides, since the SOS Medical Centre is closely located to the SOS Social Centres, it also contributed by improving the health conditions of the children and their mothers supported by the social centres in Bardiya. Along with the curative health services, the SOS Medical Centre also organised health awareness programmes for preventive measures for major prevalent diseases in the localities.

As ever, the centre provided the following services to individuals including children, mothers and other adults in general.

• Health examination by a professional doctor
• Antenatal check-up and care
• Diagnostic services at subsidized rate
• Medicine supply at subsidized rate
• Procedural treatment at subsidized rate
• Tuberculosis treatment through DOTS clinic
• Vaccination and immunisation services
• Referral service for serious cases to Bheri Zonal Hospital and Nepalgunja Medical College Hospital
• Health counseling for preventive measures
  

With these services, the medical centre has been very instrumental in providing basic health care services to the needy people of Bardiya district. People visited the centre from the localities as far off as 30 kilometers away all around. The medical centre also served 130 children under Family Strengthening Programme. These children received health care services free of cost.  The individuals got medicines from the centre at subsidised rates as follows:

• Children of FSP (2 Social Centre  10s% free)
• Patients who are extremely poor and cannot afford for treatment 100% free
• Children under 5 years' age (other than FSP beneficiaries)    50% free
• Pregnant women    30% free
• Other individuals    20% free
• Number of patients receiving services from the centre varies as per the seasons, and the variance has been recorded as follows
  

Months            Average daily turn out of patients

November - January    40 - 50 per day

February - June        60 - 70 per day

July - October        80 - 120 per day

As of the end of November 2008, the following number of patients has received different health care services from SOS Medical Centre.

FSP children (Social Centre)    -    130

Other children (0 - 18 years)    -    5232

Women (pregnant)        -    1987

Other female adults        -    3378

Other male adults        -    1835   

Total beneficiaries        -    12,562

Bharatpur SOS Social Centre

The SOS Social Centre, Bharatpur supports about 500 orphaned and vulnerable children and their families, especially children and widows affected by the ongoing Maoist rebellion. The SOS Social Centre gives help with education, adult literacy and HIV/AIDS awareness. In addition the SOS Scocial Centre provides day care for underschool age children of working mothers as well as basic health care

Gandaki SOS Social Centre

The SOS Social Centre, Gandaki supports about 400 orphaned and vulnerable children and their families, especially children and widows affected by the ongoing Maoist rebellion. The SOS Social Centre gives help with education, adult literacy and HIV/AIDS awareness. In addition the SOS Social Centre provides skills training to help poorest families achieve some financial independence

Itahari SOS Social Centre

The SOS Social Centre based at Itahari supports more than 1,500 orphaned and vulnerable children and their families, especially children and widows affected by the ongoing Maoist rebellion. The SOS Social Centre gives help with education, adult literacy and HIV/AIDS awareness. In addition the SOS Social Centre provides skills training to help poorest families achieve some financial independence.

Update from 2008:

The centre has been providing diversified services to the community people and children of marginal condition. The centre has been a linking bridge for SOS Children's Village Itahari and communities. The following facilities are run under this centre since last 16 years.

Daycare Facility

The centre is providing day-care facility to the children from marginal families who earn their bread by daily wage. They bring the children to the centre in the morning and collect in the evening. The children are provided with food, care, and love and security through-out the day and of course ECD class to the children of three to five years of age. Most of these children belong to Musahar and Chaudhary cast. At present there are 40 children from age one to five. Similarly, 34 group-up children attend the SOS School at Itahari in different classes. These children are under special scholarship. Last year two students from this centre passed the SLC in first division and doing their twelve class at SOS School Itahari. Similarly, this year four students from this centre have passed the SLC, three in first division and one in distinction. The boy who passed the SLC in distinction was brought-up in daycare ever since the boy was merely 18 months old. He belongs to a Musahar family. We assume, he must be the first one to achieve distinction in SLC from his community or ethnic group. 

SOS Medical Centre Itahari

The SOS Medical Centre run under SOS Social Centre has been a boon to the community people especially to the pregnant women and children. The service of two visiting doctors and a nurse have been very much beneficial in maintaining the health condition of the village children and outsiders. However, quite often, we feel budgetary constrain for efficient running of the dispensary. The centre provides general medical facility as well as consultancy on family planning and distribution of contra-septic. We also provide ambulance service to community people at the time of emergency.

In September a day's medical camp was organised at Bajraha village with the help of young star club of the village and village nurse. It was mainly for de-worming and general medical support to the children of the Musahar families. The programme was highly successful.

Skill Development Training Centre

This training centre has become well know centre in the eastern part of the country in imparting quality training. As a result we do have great pressure for the admission on every session. It is a matter of pride that most of the trained trainees are earning their livelihood out of the course they have learnt here. Similarly, we have also helped them to purchase sewing machines to start their profession in the respective villages. The micro credit programme has been a great help to these women.

The trainees are supposed to bring the training materials themselves. However, we have provision of scholarship to enthusiast and needy trainees who cannot afford to buy the materials. This scholarship number should be increased in future. This time we have started providing training to the FSP family too. We hope they could learn the skill and start earning themselves. We are encouraging the FSP families to have some or other skill for their earning.

Emergency Relief Programme
On August 18, 2008, the eastern dam of Koshi River breached by flood displacing around 70,000 people of four VDCs, namely Paschim Kusaha, Lakahi, Sripur and Haripur of Sunsari District. Right after this ill-fate SOS Children's Village Itahari started working on behalf of SOS Children Nepal by providing medical care in one of the relief camps. As days passed it begun to manage one of the camps by providing medical support, running ECD classes to the victim children, Trauma counseling centre to children and adults, camp management, food and relief materials (clothes to children and adults), for about 700 people in total, residing in Sharada Higher Secondary School of Balaha for a month. The President of SOS Children International, paid visit to this camp as well as Bhagawati High School, where we had set Medical camp for about 2000 victims. He also visited the flooded area with Mr. S.S. Pradhananga, the National Director of SOS Children Nepal.

With the shifting of these victims from public schools and other temporary shelters, we could not continue our support for quite sometimes due to the uncertainty of the government policies. Nonetheless, we have been able to start a Day-Care Centre in one of the camps managed by the government and other stakeholders. Since last three months we have been catering daycare facility to 125 (children from 1 to 3 years of age) children of the victim families. These children are provided with nutritious food, health/medical care, clothes, love and security for whole day. To provide care to these children we have hired 12 women from the victim families and a guy to support them in day to day activities. However, we have assigned an employee from our existing daycare centre of the village to assist and supervise the work there.

This type of service is being carried out in Nepal for the first time in its history. We are very much thankful to SOS Children Nepal and SOS Children International for their support and of course to our hard-working coworkers of SOS Children Nepal. Our special thanks go to National Director, Mr. Pradhananga, Directors, Rabin Nepali and Kabindra Shah for their valuable support during the initial phase. We should not forget to thank all the staffs of SOS Children's Village Itahari, SOS Young Star Club of Itahari and SOS Social Service Club of SOS Youth Facility Biratnagar  for their meritorious service to the victims.

Child Protection Policy
With the introduction of Child Protection Policy of SOS Children Nepal, all co-workers and mothers were provided with orientation classes on the policy. They were made aware of the child rights, child protection policy and "Who we are". Similarly, "A child Protection Policy committee" is formed comprising of a mother, Project Director, & a senior co-workers. Each co-worker has signed the policy denoting their acceptance. They are suggested to follow the policy up to the mark so that we could assure the child rights. However, we have not been able to implement the policy to its desired level for being in the first year of implementation. We have planned to have one more orientation programme on child right and protection policy in 2009 too.

Kavre SOS Social Centre

The SOS Social Centre, Kavre supports orphaned and vulnerable children and their families, especially children and widows affected by the ongoing Maoist rebellion. The SOS Social Centre gives help with education, adult literacy and HIV/AIDS awareness.

Nepalgunj SOS Medical Centre

The SOS Medical Centre, Nepalgunj helps orphaned and vulnerable children and their families in the local community. It is a mother and child clinic. It sees about 12,000 patients each year.

Nepalgunj SOS Social Centre

The SOS Social Centre, Nepalgunj supports about 300 orphaned and vulnerable children and their families, especially children and widows affected by the ongoing Maoist rebellion. The SOS Social Centre gives help with education, adult literacy and HIV/AIDS awareness.

Sanothimi SOS Social Centre

The SOS Social Centre, Sanothimi supports 400 orphaned and vulnerable children and their families, especially children and widows affected by the ongoing Maoist rebellion. The SOS Social Centre gives help with education, adult literacy and HIV/AIDS awareness.

Surkhet SOS Social Centre

The SOS Social Centre, Surkhet supports over 9000 orphaned and vulnerable children and their families, especially children and widows affected by the ongoing Maoist rebellion. The SOS Social Centre gives help with education, adult literacy and HIV/AIDS awareness.