Sister Doctor makes a difference

Over the last ten years, a Female Community Health Volunteer in Nepal has earned the respect of her neighbours by dispensing medical care and good advice.

In a small highway tea shop in Basamadi Village, in Makwanpur, Nepal, travellers and locals can, of course, buy food and drink. But, more unusually, they can also purchase basic medicines like cotrimoxazol and oral rehydration solution (ORS).

In fact, the shop is decorated with health posters and its cupboards are filled with boxes and bottles of drugs and plenty of contraceptives. This is because forty-six-year-old Manahara Pandit, a female community health volunteers (FCHV), is the owner.

For a decade, Pandit has been volunteering to improve mother and child health care services and education. She keeps a register of her services, including pharmaceutical sales, and has even recruited her daughter and husband to provide basic health tips when she is absent.

Pandit’s devotion has earned her fame and respect: she says that neighbours call her “Doctorni Didi” or “Sister Doctor.”

Last year she attended a five-day-long refresher course, about which she said, ‘It was encouraging and helped enhance my capacity to treat women and children in the most effective way.”

New FCHVs must attend an 18-day-long basic training course. Both courses have been supported by Plan in association with the Makwanpur District Health Office for the last ten years, and there are currently 419 FCHVs in Makwanpur District.

In that time, Pandit has helped to treat many diseases and health problems. She recalls the case of a thirteen-month-old:

“A child of a neighbouring community had had a cold and fever for two days. His parents did not take him to a health post because they were busy on their farm and on the third day left him with his seven-year-old sister.

“As the day passed, the baby developed difficulty in breathing. He was feverish and unable to breastfeed properly. That night, when he began gasping for air, his mother was very worried but the health post was already closed.

“At 1am she and her husband arrived at my house with the baby. He was struggling to breathe. I gave him a dose of Cotrimoxazole ‘P’ and explained to them how to care for him.

“The next day I went to their home early in the morning. The child was sound sleep. His parents were very happy. I was relieved and happy the treatment had worked. I gave the full course of medicine to the mother and advised her to consult me if any danger signs persisted.”