Just as I stepped out of the aircraft in Jumla, I saw a stretcher ready to be taken inside the aircraft. In it was a man in his 30s who had to be flown to Nepalgunj for treatment. The rush, the urgent cries of the family was so high as they had waited for three days to have him flown to Nepalgunj. Due to unavailability of flights, all he could do was wait, count the days and be thankful that he was lucky enough to survive and finally catch a flight to Nepalgunj.
During my five days stay in Jumla, I got a chance to visit a few places and meet the local people and learn about their life and hardships they face just because they are living in a remote place. Walking around the Chandannath VDC, I saw many people like the man I had met at the airport being rushed to the airport so that they could catch a flight.
Because of its remoteness, Jumla lacks professional doctors and even nurses. Two (or three) of the doctors posted at the Jumla hospital are just Graduate of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS). People have to go to Nepalgunj even for minor surgeries as the operation theater and the ultrasound machine in the hospital remain unused.
Things get worse when the doctors go home on holidays. I met Dhanasingh Bohara, a seven-year-old boy who was being rushed to the hospital. This boy had fractured his leg for the last seven days, but had no choice except to wait for the arrival of the doctor as his family could not afford to fly to Nepalgunj. Bohara lives in Guthichaur VDC which is a day’s walk from the hospital. “My son has been complaining of pain and I have been enquiring at the hospital regularly to check if the doctor has arrived. We came to know that he will arrive today, so I am taking him to the hospital.”
“Many of us in Jumla have to suffer because of the unavailability of good doctors and good treatment,” said Jasur Bohara the boy’s father. Most of the medical cases are referred to Nepalgunj. Normal airfare to Nepalgunj is actually NRs 3,700 but due to limited flights, people sometimes have to pay up to NRs 14,000 for one way. So the poor refuse to go for treatment.
There is one district hospital, one primary healthcare centre, nine health posts and 20 sub-health posts in Jumla according to Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) Nepal (2010). Sadly, most of the post of health officials are vacant. Life saving medicines are also unavailable in the region. So, now I ask: How many deaths could have been prevented if recorded at all? Do the people resign themselves to inadequate healthcare because of their location?
The harsh life in Jumla has affected the care of children. With both parents busy working in the fields, infants are left with neighbors. Infant death is high and couples accept it as part of reality saying they can always produce another child. Most of the children in Jumla are malnourished and parents are often not aware.
Education is another hard-hit sector. Though there are number of schools in the area, it lacks teachers and proper monitoring. There are teachers who single-handedly manage 3-4 grades. I was shocked to see one teacher handling the whole primary section by herself. Asha Shrestha, the teacher, was handling the play group, nursery, lower kindergarten and upper kindergarten in the same classroom all by herself. I was told that there are schools where teachers have more than 100 students belonging to different grades in the same class room. Moreover there is only one higher secondary school and only one campus in Jumla covering an area of 2,531sq km with over 100,000 people.
With few teachers willing to work in such a remote place with no facilities, proper education monitoring by the government is non-existent. Without good education for children, I worry about their future.
Parents have no time for their children’s education as Jumla residents go to higher mountains to collect Yarshagumba (a medicinal herb) for 2-3 months as it fetches good amount of money. Many parents take their children along from April-July. Then comes a month-long festival during October when most of the teachers from Tarai go home to only return in March to skip the harsh cold winter of Jumla from November to February.
The school buildings of Jumla are not in a condition to accommodate children for classes during the wintertime when the temperature reaches to minus 8 degrees. Thus, children miss out a lot in terms of education in Jumla.
The harsh life in Jumla has also affected the care of children. With both parents busy working in the fields, infants are left with neighbors. Infant death is high and couples accept it as part of reality saying they can always produce another child. Most of the children in Jumla are malnourished and parents are often not aware. The rights of the child are not even in the consciousness of the residents.
Indeed, the government faces a huge task to ensure the rights of children to good health and education as these will determine the future of Jumla. If Jumla experiences such difficulties, I cannot imagine how the situation must be in far more remote places with no proper access. Serious steps must be taken by the concerned stakeholders and the government to give the people their right to basic needs in places like Jumla and other remote places of Nepal.
sunjuli_kunwar@wvi.org
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