PHASE Nepal (Practical Help Achieving Self Empowerment) www.phasenepal.org
Anandaban Leprosy Hospital, Lalitpur, Kathmandu www.tlmnepal.org
Bani Bilas School, Lalitpur, Kathmandu www.actionaid.org.uk
PHASE Nepal is linked to the UK registered charity PHASE Worldwide. It collaborates with local health authorities throughout Nepal to improve primary healthcare facilities especially in remote mountainous rural communities. As well as equipment and medical supplies, they also provide training to health staff and help with logistics management. Areas of support include family planning, maternity care (deliveries and antenatal/postnatal care), immunizations, growth monitoring, nutrition, minor illnesses, and emergencies.
Having been introduced to their team in 2024, Guernsey Aid agreed to help fund a project that will provide much needed medical equipment and support to seven of their remote healthposts including the post at Manbu village in the sparsely populated and isolated northern district of Gorkha. It has a population of over 5,000 and lies in the shadows of Manaslu and Himalchuli mountains many miles away from any government healthcare facilities. Food poverty is still a problem there, with an average of 23-40% of people living in food poverty. Typhoid, leprosy, burns and dental caries are just some of the other problems affecting local village communities. Families walk for several days to access care. Due to a lack of essential medicines and health awareness, children die from diarrhoea and other treatable illnesses. Malnutrition rates are high, as are maternal and child mortality rates (childbirth is rarely assisted by a skilled health worker).
Two Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) work at the health post in Manbu where they offer a basic primary healthcare and maternity service. They also run an outreach programme involving door-to-door visits and community/school based health education events. Dr Nick and Claudine stayed with them for a few days in February 2025 and were amazed by their commitment and by the scope of the work they do. They were also able to witness one of the Guernsey Aid funded ultrasound scanners being put to good use in their antenatal clinic (see Spring 2025 update).
The Leprosy Mission is active in as many as 34 countries around the world and has a long association with the people of Guernsey. It started its work in Nepal in 1957 with the establishment of a hospital specializing in the care and treatment of leprosy patients at Anandaban a few kilometres south of the capital city Kathmandu. Since then the hospital has gone from strength to strength and has gained an international reputation as a centre of excellence especially in the field of research. It now receives referrals from all over Nepal and also from parts of India with people making long and arduous journeys for the chance to be seen and treated there. In Nepal alone there are as many as 3,429 new cases of leprosy diagnosed each year. If caught early these new cases can be treated but in the wider community there already exists a huge burden of disability, deformity, social exclusion and chronic ill health resulting from leprosy that to a large extent still needs to be recognised and addressed.
TLM Nepal also runs a disability inclusive community development programme for people affected by leprosy that concentrates not just on health but also on education, sustainable livelihoods, advocacy and capacity building. In the very south of the country at Chitwan the Madi Eco-Community Agricultural Co-operative is an excellent example of a successful self-help savings, loans and livelihoods project set up by TLM for disadvantaged members of the Tharau community.
On their first visit in November 2019 Dr Nick and Claudine saw for themselves the amazing work being done at the hospital and were able to go into the operating theatre to watch a pioneering tendon reconstruction operation being performed on a patient with a claw hand deformity that was affecting his ability to earn a living. At the busy outpatient clinic in Lalitpur they also met a retired soldier who had served in the Gurkha Regiment and had successfully undergone surgery for a dropped foot caused by leprosy. When they next visited in February 2025 they were shown around the new medical building but the hospital was still very much in a state of shock following a devastating landslide towards the end of 2024 which had destroyed the training centre and necessitated the permanent closure of some of the wards.
Following the devastating earthquake in Nepal in 2015, the people of Guernsey offered both financial and practical assistance to Bani Bilas School on the outskirts of Kathmandu which had been almost completely destroyed. Funds from the Overseas Aid Commission and from the Guernsey branch of Action Aid covered the re-building costs and a working party travelled out to Nepal to help dig the new foundations.
Dr Nick and Claudine visited the school in November 2019 when it had re-opened and they were very impressed with the enthusiastic attitude of the staff and the pupils particularly in relation to gender equality issues and towards study and learning in general. In conjunction with Guernsey Aid the school was adopted by the pupils of Blanchelande College in Guernsey as one of the projects they supported during 2021. The money they raised funded additional library resources and IT equipment and the sixth form at Blanchelande are hoping to establish closer links with their counterparts in Nepal in the years ahead (see photos in the Autumn 2020 newsletter).
Guernsey Aid 