History has been made in Nepal with the ground breaking news that two doctors in the country have become the first medical practitioners to graduate with the Doctorate of Emergency Medicine. The two are Dr Ramesh Kumar Maharjan from the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital and his colleague Dr Ajay Thapa from the Grande International Hospital, Kathmandu. The two acknowledge that their graduation would not have been possible without the support and training by health staff and specialists from a number of countries including their home country, Australia, New Zealand and from ISTIH.
Both doctors feel that they are now better skilled to deal with the challenges they face on a daily basis in their hospitals but as Dr Thapa has recognised “ the challenges are always challenging.” The two graduates are not sitting back and have called for continued support for further training in Emergency Medicine for nurses and paramedics in their hospitals.
Emergency medical specialists from Australia and New Zealand are also celebrating the news of the graduation, an achievement which is made more remarkable because of the daunting tasks in delivering health care in the developing world. Among those who are congratulating the doctors is Dr Jennifer Rush a consultant emergency physician at the Royal Adelaide Hospital who has returned recently from a visit to Nepal. As stated in her report, Dr Rush has described the graduation as marking ‘a new era for Nepal’.
