Dolpo Tsaga (Chharka) Welfare Healthcare Clinic
Free Healthcare Clinic for Dolpo
Menri Lopon Rinpoche invites you to participate with him in support of a free healthcare clinic in Tsaga (Chharka), Upper Dolpo, Nepal, and give something of great value to the people of the land of his ancestors.
Upper Dolpo is the most remote and least developed district in Nepal. It is cut off from the rest of Nepal by a series of high mountain passes and closed by snow most of the year. Upper Dolpo shelters nearly 6,000 people of Tibetan descent, whose lives revolve around Buddhism, Bon, barley and yaks. Most of the villages are over 14,000 feet, making them among the highest settlements on earth. The Nepali government has restricted travel to the region to protect the culture and environment.
Lack of healthcare has always been a serious problem. Before our Clinic opened, the infant mortality rate was over 50%, with maternal mortality at more than 25%. Simple medications were nearly impossible to get, and infections from minor cuts and scrapes often led to amputation or death. The closest medical support was 100 miles away across the mountains. This journey must be done on foot, since the route is little more than a goat trail on the side of a mountain. As a result, most illnesses and injuries went untreated.
At the request of the local villagers and nomads who have never had medical care of any sort, Menri Lopon Trinley Nyima Rinpoche, a native of Upper Dolpo and head instructor at Menri Monastery in northern India, and with the help of many generous donors, has built, supplied and staffed a medical clinic in his home village.
The Tsaga Clinic provides free healthcare to anyone in Upper Dolpo. It is located 6 miles from the southern border of Tibet in the village of Tsaga (aka Chaarka). The clinic opened in 2012. On-going financial support is needed to provide a salary for our nurses, provide medical supplies and equipment, and for the ongoing operation of the clinic. We will be providing solar power and fresh running water to the building and in 2018 we put a new roof on the building.
Our new nurse, Yangzom Lama, is from another village in the Humla region. She is well trained in western medicine and has been working in Kathmandu. All the nurses who have worked at the clinic have, in turn, given basic training in first aid and hygiene to the nomads, so that we can “pay it forward” for generations to come.
The clinic is on the grounds of the Yanggön Thongdröl Phuntsokling Monastery and is being run under the supervision of the monastery.
With your help the lives of the people of Dolpo will improve significantly. Your donation to the Chharka Clinic Fund will help bring basic healthcare to the region and bring the peoples’ dream to reality. Donations are tax deductible and we’ll gratefully accept contributions of any size. The international fund raising effort is staffed by volunteers so your entire donation goes directly to the clinic.
Please give today. Make checks payable to KHYUNGDZONG WODSEL LING and mail them to:
KWL
c/o Dika Ryan
1977 N. New Hampshire Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
For more information contact
Dika Ryan
dikaryan@sbcglobal.net
March 15, 2019 Clinic Update:
Dear Friends,
Dolpo, a Trans-Himalayan region, in the upper part of Dolpa district of western Nepal bordered by Tibet is home to some of the highest altitude human dwelling places on earth. The beautiful mountains, pristine environment and rich culture and tradition makes this area an attractive place for those seeking new experience away from the hustle and bustle of congested cities. But the very beautiful mountains make this area one of the most inaccessible places to reach isolating it from the rest of the world. Inhabited by a culturally Tibetan people who earn their livelihood from an age-old tradition of subsistence farming coupled with animal husbandry, they struggle to make a living from this harsh and arid land. Neglected by the government and made doubly hard by language barrier, they are deprived from basic necessities like health care, education, proper transportation let alone modern amenities. To support those underprivileged communities recently some NGOs have started schools and clinics, yet a large swath of the population remains outside their purview.
The Tsaga Clinic was built by His Eminence Lopon Menri Trinley Nyima Rinpoche with the support of his foreign friends with the aim of providing basic medicines and health services to the people of Tsaga as to improve the quality of their life. Due to its hard geography and remoteness this place is neglected by its government and foreign help had not been reached as it is inaccessible to the tourist because of many unavoidable reasons. People here are deprived of many basic facilities including heath. There are records of children dying from even minor diarrhea resulting in dehydration and mothers dying during and after child- birth is treated as normal. Due to high maternal death during labor, to get pregnant here is like having some deathly disease at terminal stage.
In 2018 from April to October we tried our best to help the people fight minor health problems and referred those we can’t treat out there. The services we provided this year are as follows:
- Basic medicine
- First Aid
- Family planning services (Oral Contraceptive Pills, Depo-provera injection, Implants for five years.)
- Antenatal check up
- Postnatal check up
- Home delivery with skilled birth attendant
- Basic hygiene training
- Tooth extractions and preventative dental care
Nurse Karmu treated over 400 patients this past year. Her patients ranged in age from 7 months old to 84 years old. While a great deal of her work at the clinic involved pre-natal and post-natal care and family planning, she has added basic dental treatment to her abilities, and performed dental extractions for 22 patients!
Emergency medical care included suturing a head wound for a 9 year old boy who fell and hit his head on a rock, a 55 year-old man who injured his leg and needed stitches, several patients with other leg injuries which required professional cleaning, antibiotics and bandaging, and one of the local teachers who suffered severe altitude sickness and needed an IV and catheterization.
These are just a few examples of the 400 people who were treated at the Clinic last year. All of these patients are fully recovered and back to their normal lives, thanks to Nurse Karmu’s professional care!
Nurse Karmu also provides the people of Chharka with basic training in preventative medicine, hygiene, nutrition and oral care. We are very grateful to her for her hard work with the villagers and nomads in the Dolpo region of Nepal. We are hoping to send a second nurse to Chharka in 2020 to help with the workload. If you would like to help sponsor Nurse Karmu or a second nurse/practitioner, you can donate via the PayPal button above. Any amount is appreciated.
The Dolpo Health Clinic is vital to this region of Nepal – lives are being saved and suffering is being alleviated!
Please help us support the clinic by giving a monthly sustaining donation. With your donation we will be able to continue to provide wages for our staff, purchase medical supplies and fund emergency medical evacuations.
