Following a Partner Organization’s Fight Against COVID
As more aspects of life in the United States slowly return to something like normal, many other countries are grappling with relentless second and third waves of COVID-19. In Kathmandu, Nepal, GlobeMed at University of California, Berkeley’s partner Dhulikhel Hospital is applying what they’ve learned from the first wave of COVID to their fight against the second wave of the virus sweeping the country.
Dhulikhel Hospital is a nonprofit community hospital focused on providing healthcare services to the poor. Pillars of their mission include promoting healthcare in rural areas and encouraging sustainable community development. As the first wave of COVID-19 hit Nepal, Dhulikhel Hospital suffered from many of the same issues faced by other healthcare organizations in developing countries, such as inadequate equipment, infrastructure, and personnel. Nonetheless, they utilized strategies of collaboration and partnership to fight COVID in their community, actively engaging in preparedness, response, and research.
Dhulikhel Hospital tried many different strategies during the first wave of COVID-19. Some initiatives were medical, like a fever clinic, contact tracing, lab testing, and dead body management. (In fact, Dhulikhel Hospital handled the first known case of a death from COVID in Nepal.) Other strategies centered around community support, such as producing PPE, running a COVID hotline number, and disseminating COVID safety information through the radio. Given Dhulikhel Hospital’s emphasis on empowering local communities around health, this community support was an important priority in their response.
Between the first and second waves, Dhulikhel Hospital spearheaded vaccination campaigns. They were a critical part of the Nepali government’s COVID-19 vaccination push, initiating the vaccination of frontline workers in Kavre District and eventually scaling up to vaccinate around 13,000 individuals.
However, in April 2021, a second wave of COVID-19 began to sweep Nepal. This wave was much deadlier than the first. At its peak in May, it was characterized by extreme shortages of oxygen, as well as ventilators, beds, and personnel. The second wave has slowly been subsiding, but it has left Nepal with a total of around 801,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 11,200 deaths.
The second wave has not only affected Dhulikhel Hospital itself, but the work done in GlobeMed at Berkeley’s partnership with the hospital. Taylor Worley, Berkeley’s 2021 GROW Coordinator, recalls how their GROW team had to change up all their plans at the last minute in order to meet Dhulikhel Hospital’s rapidly-shifting needs. “They were having a spike in cases, and it was pretty drastic and immediate, and he [Pramesh, Berkeley’s partner contact] asked for a fundraiser.” Throughout the summer, they were able to raise $3,000 for oxygen and urgently-needed medical supplies.
Meanwhile, Dhulikhel Hospital was jumping into action a second time. They scaled up many medical initiatives from the first wave, such as the fever clinic, laboratory testing, and isolation units. This time, an information center was created to complement these initiatives by efficiently dispatching and storing information, such as for triage and testing reports. Working from home and online classes were resumed as well for students and some staff, employing the technological literacy around these systems developed during the previous wave. Safety guidelines and protocols developed during the first wave were utilized again in all operations. And Dhulikhel Hospital has also been at the vanguard of COVID-19 research in Nepal, leading genome sequencing efforts on new variants.
A few months later, Taylor says the extra work she and her team had to put in to keep their relationship with Dhulikhel Hospital strong through the stresses of the second wave has paid off. “I’m actually really appreciative of the friendship that I’ve made with our partner,” she says. “We still text on WhatsApp and Facebook all the time, and he [Pramesh] sends me photos of different festivals and his kids and things like that.”
And with the second wave now subsiding in Nepal, Sudip Shrestha, a public health officer at Dhulikhel Hospital, has compiled and shared a report of lessons learned with other GlobeMed partner organizations. His hope is that partners in countries fighting second or third waves of COVID — such as India, Thailand, and Uganda — can learn from each other as they strive to defeat the virus and help their communities.
