HRA dispatches medics’ teams to Manang and Solukhumbu for providing health services to trekkers, mountaineers

KATHMANDU: The Himalayan Rescue Association Nepal (HRA) has dispatched a 14-member team along with foreign physicians to three different places of Solukhumbu and Manang districts for treating the foreign and domestic mountaineers and trekkers.

The Association, established in 1973, with the objective of providing medical services to trekkers and climbers on mountaineering expedition during the spring and autumn seasons, has sent a team of 14 persons including five foreigners and four Nepalis with the beginning of spring season climbing.

HRA President Dambar Parajuli said the doctors’ team has been assigned establishing temporary health outpost at the Mt Everest Base Camp and Pheriche of Solukhumbu and at Manang village in Manang.

“We have mobilized volunteer doctors by training them to provide specialist services in the Base Camp area targeting domestic and foreign tourists going to climb the mountain,” he said.

One foreign and two Nepali doctors will provide health services at the Base Camp and two foreign and one Nepali doctor each in Pheriche and Manang villages respectively. HRA employees have also been deployed in the team.

Parajuli informed that the teams deployed at both the places have already started work.

Dr Laura Elizabeth Clapham, Dr Saraellen Wesley Arathun and Nepali Dr Sabitra Thapa have been deployed at Manang Health Post, while Dr John Jay Everett of USA, Dr Kentze Koh of Australia and Dr Surya Prasad Joshi of Nepal have been deployed at The Pheriche Health Post.

Dr Roy Gordon Harris from the UK, Dr Ashish Lohani and Dr Suraj Shrestha from Nepal has been deployed at the Everest Base Camp, said Parajuli.

The HRA, which has been serving thousands of domestic and foreign climbers every year, has also been providing services to trekkers by setting up a health camp at Gosainkunda on the occasion of Janai Purnima festival.

Chief Executive Officer of the Association, Govinda Basyal, said that the volunteer doctors deployed in the field have been provided intensive training on the health problems faced in the mountainous areas, including the treatment of acute high altitude illness and other conditions.

The team has been providing free health services to the domestic trekkers, he said, adding that the HRA has been deputing only doctors recognized by the Nepal Medical Council.

HRA is a voluntary non-profit organization formed in 1973 with an objective to reduce casualties in the Nepal Himalayas, especially keeping in view the increasing number of Nepalese and foreigners who trek up into the remote wilderness.

One of the most important tasks of the HRA is to try to prevent deaths from Acute Mountain Sickness that confronts foreign trekkers and Nepali people. For the last 43 years, the HRA has helped make a safer Himalaya for tourism.