Visiting HRDC in Nepal

Ahyoung, cbm New Zealand’s Programmes Officer, recently visited the cbm-funded Hospital and Rehabilitation Centre for Disabled Children (HRDC) in Nepal.

HRDC is a 100-bed non-profit paediatric orthopaedic hospital and rehabilitation centre that provides treatment for children, like 4-year-old Pushpa, with physical disabilities from socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Pushpa was treated for clubfoot and had two successful surgical interventions. Now she is able to walk freely with the help of her club-shoes (assistive device) that were made especially for her at the HRDC workshop.

Having joined cbm last year and now managing this project, Ahyoung was able to develop great relationships with our local partners, and really learn more about the needs of the community. She found it incredible to see how dedicated and committed all the project staff were at the HRDC, and how much effort they were putting in to ensure that these children get the best possible treatment and services available.

Ahyoung was able to learn about the implementation cycle in more detail – of how the outreach field workers were trained in physiotherapy to be able to provide homebased physiotherapy sessions to children unable to travel the distance to the HRDC centre, and of how the children identified through the outreach camps receive quality treatment in the form of surgical intervention and follow up services. She also visited the workshops where they design and produce assistive devices (both prosthesis and orthosis) such as shoes for clubfoot, specifically tailored to each child’s needs.

Ahyoung also had the rewarding experience of visiting some of our beneficiaries and their families, who are all very thankful to cbm and our generous supporters for being able to receive good quality treatment. She met children whose future hopes are to become a nurse or doctor, so they too can help other children with physical disabilities like themselves.

Remarkably, 27 of the current HRDC staff members at the hospital were also past patients who received treatment at the centre themselves as a child.

“I don’t think of HRDC as work, I think of it as a place of miracles.” Iroj, HRDC Project Manager

For all of the children who receive orthopaedic surgery, it is a very long process of recovery. It isn’t about just receiving the surgical intervention but about the many months or even years of rehabilitation, which requires a lot of time and commitment from both the patient (and family) receiving the treatment, as well as the hospital centre providing the services.

Ahyoung was delighted to see the positive change as the children regained their dignity when being welcomed back into their community. Learn more…