August 2008 

We want to give thanks for the following answered prayer from July’s prayer requests: 

1.       The official opening of the new Emergency Building by Jennie Collins. All departments have now moved over and have begun settling into their new premises. More on this can be read in the news and stories section.

2.       Staffing – we have seen an increase in short-term medical personnel planning to come in the next 6 months. This will be a real life-line for the hospital and help the existing staff who have been working extremely hard recently to take a bit of a break.

3.       We have now officially had confirmation of a new expatriate teacher (from Finland) coming to teach at the Tutorial Group. She will be here for 10 months, until June 2009.

4.       Patient numbers are up this month, which is really good especially in terms of financial sustainability for the hospital.   

We’d really appreciate prayer for the following: 

1.       In July we received the tragic news of the death of one of our senior Nepali surgeons in a bus accident. Please pray for his family, particularly his wife and young daughter as they try to come to terms with his death.

2.       Staffing – we still face a shortage of long-term GPs, surgeons and other medical. Please pray that the right people will be drawn to Tansen.

3.       As mentioned above we now have an expatriate teacher coming until June 2009. We are still actively recruiting for someone to take up this role wef June 2009, and preferably someone long-term that would provide continuity of education. Without good primary-level educational facilities many potential long-term personnel won’t come.

4.       Nepal’s political situation – we are still seeing regular road closures country-wide as various people out-work their grievances by causing disruption until their demands are addressed. These blockades have a huge affects not only in terms of disruption to travel but also to food prices, where we see rapid increases as goods cannot be brought in. As in any such case it is the poorer people who are hit most. The other issue that directly impacts us is that these blockade situations mean that patients cannot get to hospital. We have already had at least 3 deaths of patients in the last few weeks directly linked to them not getting here in time. Please pray for the ongoing process of forming a new government; that it would be able to take Nepal forward as a nation, and deal with the growing civil unrest in an appropriate way.