Collaboration
Expertise
Volunteering
Fundraisingan all-volunteer
crisis-response group of individuals and organisations
who have come together to
tackle
the current Covid situation in Nepal
CollaborationExpertiseVolunteeringFundraisingCovid Alliance for Nepal is an all-volunteer crisis-response group of individuals and organisations who have come together to tackle the current Covid situation in Nepal. The alliance’s guiding principle is around collaboration, and creating immediate and sustainable impact whereby decisions are driven by science, data and expertise.
push actors with the power to (re)allocate their surplus vaccine doses, ensuring vulnerable communities in Nepal receive vaccines.
blueprint integrating the MoHP’s guidelines and recommendations from doctors along with providing resource support to set-up such centers.
providing medical support staffed by trained nurses and medical officers for both covid and non covid related issues.
scripted and disseminated multiple Public Service Announcements (PSAs) across 23 FM radio stations in several local languages.
provides information on oxygen resources, procures oxygen related equipment (e.g. cylinders, concentrators and plants), coordinates refill and circulation.
for frontline medical workers, hotline staff, and isolation center staff in partnership with HAPSA-Nepal and Brown University & Project Hope.
working on a welfare scheme for frontline workers who may need medical treatment in the case of contracting Covid on the job.
working with government schools, wards and grassroot organisations to provide food assistance in various locations around the valley.
running sessions on managing mental and emotional health along with support networks and sharing teleconsultation counselling services.
Nepal currently has the highest rate of reproduction of COVID-19 in the world. In some places, test results - for those who take them - are returning with positivity rates of higher than 40%. By mid-July, at the current rate of reproduction and infection, Nepal could be looking at 800,000 Covid patients.
Our public health and medical infrastructure is strained and insufficient even in ordinary times, but the dearth of trained doctors, hospital access, ICUs, and even basic materials like supplementary oxygen is one that we feel especially acutely now. The “low” mortality rates for Covid are in contexts with medical infrastructure and supplementary oxygen that can respond to patient need, and avert death. We are already looking at a possibility of 10 critically ill patients for every hospital bed, and where supplies of otherwise-basic medication, and oxygen, are already running very low, and not accessible in other places. From the strict lockdown of 2020, Nepalis have been facing lockdown fatigue -- but at entirely too dangerous a time.
Breaking the cycle of nation-wide lockdowns can only take place with vaccination and mass public health advocacy. While the situation in terms of infection and transmission is sobering, we are committed to working with each other, and other groups, to mobilize what we can to respond to peoples’ needs.