PHASE Austria financed two ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwives – midwives with additional health care training) as well as medicines and consumables for the health post, which ensured the population’s access to primary health care.
Project communities:
Chumchet VDC, North Gorkha
Requirements
Chumchet is – besides the projects in Humla – in one of the most remote areas where PHASE works: It is at least a three and a half day walk from the nearest road (if you are very fit), and the road is a full day’s travel from Kathmandu. Chumchet village is so remote that it never had any form of regular health care before we started working there, and even the schools are not in operation because the teachers can’t make it there.
Implementation and result
PHASE has been running a health post in Chumchet since January 2007. It took more than a year for our staff to build up the trust of the population enough to be invited into the homes, and another two years for prenatal care and obstetric care to be accepted and requested. – Just in the last few months, women have started consistently calling our medical workers Ekata and Mira when they go into labour, and the health post’s patient numbers have increased dramatically.
In 2007/2008, the health workers at Chumchet treated only 844 patients, provided birth planning to 39 couples and did not attend a single birth (the health post was also closed for two months that year due to staff shortages).
In 2008/2009, a total of 3,567 came to PHASE Health Centre, including more than 150 for birth planning, and PHASE staff attended 15 home births.
In 2017, PHASE Nepal handed over the health post to a friendly NGO, Community Action Nepal, as part of a spatial consolidation for logistical reasons, which continues the services built up by PHASE.
