Reducing the impact of nurse emigration

photo credit: World Health Organization

Recently The Guardian published a story titled, “‘If we leave, Nepal will suffer’: embattled hospitals fear impact of UK job offers.” IUBAT graduate Sailesh Bhandari confirms this from Kathmandu, where he works for the NGO, Unity in Health Nepal, as a mental health trainer. “It's the current picture of Nepal's health care system and the potential risk and crisis. We work with nurses and health care staff from different hospitals and rural communities. We commonly find during our two or three year projects that the majority of the staff will either be gone or replaced. It has always been a tremendous challenge.”

The WHO Code of Practice on International Recruitment establishes principles for ethical recruitment. However, COVID-19 has resulted in reduced health workforce availability and greater pressures due to infections and deaths, stress, burnout and mental health issues. The 2014 BHP report, Advancing Nurse Education in Bangladesh includes recommendations to reduce the hazards of an export-based approach to nurse education, using the Philippines as an example.

Improving mental health care in Nepal

Photo credit: https://unityinhealthnepal.org/

Mental, neurological, and substance use disorders are common in all regions of the world, affecting every community and age group across all income countries. While 14% of the global burden of disease is attributed to these disorders, most of the people affected - 75% in many low-income countries - do not have access to the treatment they need.

IUBAT graduate Sailesh Bhandari works as a Clinical Nurse Educator and Team Leader in a project to improve community mental health care in rural Nepal that is being delivered by the NGO Unity in Health Nepal. Sailesh's main tasks have been capacity building as well as educating local people about good mental health, and raising awareness on this critical but neglected issue. His team has trained Health Assistants, Female Community Health Volunteers and others in basic mental health care skills, so that patients and families have a local mental health support network when specialist care services are not available.

To ensure consistency with other training programs in South Asia, they use resources such as the Mental Health Gap Training Program developed by WHO. The mhGap program aims at scaling up services for mental, neurological and substance use disorders especially for low- and middle-income countries .

One Student One Tree at Bluebell

Recently, Prof Golam Mostofa an educator and also former Member of Parliament joined Rabiul Islam to participate in the One Student One Tree program at Bluebell School. The program is designed to engage children in responding to climate change. Before planting the trees, the guests of honour reviewed the students’ art and awarded small prizes.