Hope and Home promotes sustainable solutions to world poverty and disparity through global partnerships in development, education, health, and service.

 

Each year, many Nepalese die or suffer unnecessarily due to lack of health education and access to adequate health care resources. The sick in the mountain regions or villages sometimes die long before a physician can even diagnose. Because of the poor transportation, patients often have to be hand-carried in bamboo baskets to the nearest health center, often many miles from their village.

 

Individuals with special knowledge in the following areas are always needed.

 

Primary Care and General Medicine
General Dentistry/ Oral Surgery
Pediatrics
Gynecology and Women's Health
Health Education
HIV/AIDS counseling

 

Volunteer Program is working to address these issues by sponsoring village level community health initiatives, to do this we need volunteers who can train Nepalese health workers as well as provide direct health care services.

 

Our Medicine projects are an invaluable preparation for a career in medicine. You will experience the stark contrast between Western medical practice and the realities of medicine in developing countries. Sadly, you will also see medical conditions that have remained untreated and have developed to an advanced pathological stage uncommon in developed countries.

 

The key requirements in a medical volunteer are initiative, enthusiasm, and readiness to work in unfamiliar circumstances - a surgery with minimal equipment, an understaffed hospital, a clinic for leprosy or tuberculosis patients. This program has the potential to give you plenty of hands-on experience and exposure to the medical field.

 

HIV/AIDS Care and Education Program

In Nepal there is a serious stigma attached to those with HIV/AIDS. People have limited knowledge about HIV/AIDS; many poor people inNepal are not educated enough to understand the causes of AIDS and how it is transmitted.

 

The instability that creates the problem of human trafficking also generates considerable labor migration and internal displacement. Most migrants and internally displaced persons are men who move to urban areas either in search of employment or to escape the Maoist insurgency, leaving their partners in rural areas. As a result, Nepalese women face a higher risk of infection when their partners return home from areas of high HIV prevalence. Compounding the problem, many health facilities in rural areas of Nepal are either damaged or destroyed completely. Nepal’s current lack of strong community cohesiveness is creating a high risk environment for HIV infection. Whilst prevalence in Nepal remains low relative to countries in Africa, latest figures show that over 60,000 people have the HIV infection and there is increasing alarm that the disease is escalating.

 

People who become infected are often excluded from their own family's home and from society. In Kathmandu, some organizations are working to improve HIV/AIDS awareness, education, and care of HIV-infected patients. The goal of these groups' activities is to foster awareness of the disease and work to change attitudes and behavior towards those unfortunate enough to be infected. These clinics are involved in many worthwhile activities:

 

Providing shelter for HIV/AIDS patients
Counseling HIV-positive people and their families

 

Volunteers in this project will work with local groups and will be responsible for a variety of tasks:

 

Counseling activities
Skill-sharing and training activities
Rendering help in treatment (trained volunteers with a health care background only)
Helping to prepare and present educational programs
Any related help requested by local organizations