Public Health and Medical Care

VIN Community Health & Medical Care Program aims to improve conditions through relevant education, services and public awareness programs. The volunteers’ skills and interests, as well as the assessed needs of the community, will act as a guide to making each program relevant and beneficial.

VIN provides qualified doctors and nurses to staff local health clinics. Medical internships in Nepal allow you to assist in reviewing patients at the clinic, helping the staff and providing training, depending on their level of expertise. The health clinic is open daily with a doctor present three days each week.

Community Health Education can sustainably improve the health of a community and is at the heart of VIN’s health projects. Various sessions are provided for women’s groups, children’s groups, as well as at schools. During a medical internship in Nepal the volunteer will formulate and run health education sessions alongside local translators. Volunteers are also involved in designing and conducting VIN assisted health surveys and diagnostic research to ensure optimum outcomes.

Current Health Issues

Rural Nepali are often reluctant to receive contemporary health services because of superstitious belief systems as well as other cultural influences. This in turn often leads to fatalities from preventable illness. Medical internships in Nepal are an opportunity to illustrate the importance and benefits of making the transition towards conventional medicine.

Many of the health problems stem from a lack of basic hygiene practice and facilities. VIN has supported toilet construction within the community, and recent research has shown significant benefits achieved through this project, but education is still needed to encourage the change of behavioural habits.

VIN welcomes interested medical students, professionals, or organisations to join our Community Health and Medical Care Program.

 Aims for 2014

Improved Health Services: promoting the use of health post facilities for the community and supporting good medical practice. Raising community awareness about the benefits of health care, through volunteer established centres.

Hygiene Facilities: Giving all families access to toilets (over 600 toilets in total), providing all the families with proper waste management systems.

Health and hygiene awareness: Teaching communities about maintaining hygienic and healthy environments health and independently addressing female health matters.

Sustainable School health program: To promote health standards in schools, regular education sessions are conducted. The school health program includes regular check-ups and medicine distribution sessions and dental screening. The key to health education is in simplifying complicated medical knowledge so that it may benefit the greatest number of Nepali students.

How we do it:

Health Institutions:   Volunteers are assigned to health institutions either run by the government or local community, both in rural and urban settings. Medical volunteers will work three to five hours a day, Monday to Friday.

Health Camps: Medical Volunteers will be mobilised to work in health camps for a prearranged schedule: 1 day to a week. Local medical professionals operate within VIN, so as to assist volunteers. Volunteers’ responsibilities range from distributing medicine, consulting citizens about appropriate health care awareness.

Health Awareness Programs: Many Nepali people are unaware of health and hygiene and environmental issues. We therefore mobilise local and international medical volunteers mainly to work with the youth clubs, women’s groups, children’s clubs, women microcredit cooperatives, and other local organisations to teach them about proper health and sanitation habits. VIN aims to prepare local health advocates by training the local groups of women, youth, teachers and children.

Project Summary