Admitting Deserving Medical Students from Rural and Disadvantaged: Patan Academy of Health Sciences' Approach

BACKGROUND

Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS) aims to produce physicians who would be able and willing to serve in the rural areas. Recognizing the critical importance of student selection strategy, among others, in achieving the program goals, it has adopted an innovative scheme for selecting medical students. This paper describes PAHS medical student selection scheme that favors enrollment of deserving applicants from rural and disadvantaged groups so as to help improve distribution of physicians in rural Nepal.

METHODS

A student admission committee comprising a group of medical educators finalized a three-step student selection scheme linked with scholarships after reviewing relevant literatures and consultative meetings with experts within and outside Nepal. The committee did local validation of Personal Quality Assessment (PQA) that tested cognitive ability and personality traits, Admission OSPE (Objective Structured Performance Examination) that assessed non-cognitive attributes of applicants. It also provided preferential credits to applicants' socio-economic characteristics to favor the enrollment of deserving applicants from rural and disadvantaged groups through Social Inclusion Matrix (SIM). Three different categories of scholarship schemes namely Partial, Collaborative and Full were devised with Partial providing 50% and other two categories each providing 100% coverage of tuition fee.

RESULTS

PAHS student selection scheme succeeded in enrolling more than half of its students from rural areas of Nepal, including about 10% of the students from that of the most backward region of the country. About one third of students were female and about the same were from public and community school. Sixty percent of students receive different categories of scholarships.

CONCLUSIONS

Limited findings indicate the success of the selection scheme in enrolling high proportion of applicants from rural and disadvantageous groups and enable them to pursue study by providing scholarships.

Analysis of Health Sector Budget of Nepal

INTRODUCTION

Primarily, health sector connects two segments - medicine and public health, where medicine deals with individual patients and public health with the population health. Budget enables both the disciplines to function effectively. The Interim Constitution of Nepal, 2007 has adapted the inspiration of federalism and declared the provision of basic health care services free of cost as a fundamental right, which needs strengthening under foreseen federalism.

METHODS

An observational retrospective cohort study, aiming at examining the health sector budget allocation and outcome, was done. Authors gathered health budget figures (2001 to 2013) and facts published from authentic sources. Googling was done for further information. The keywords for search used were: fiscal federalism, health care, public health, health budget, health financing, external development partner, bilateral and multilateral partners and healthcare accessibility. The search was limited to English and Nepali-language report, articles and news published.

RESULTS

Budget required to meet the population's need is still limited in Nepal. The health sector budget could not achieve even gainful results due to mismatch in policy and policy implementation despite of political commitment.

CONCLUSIONS

Since Nepal is transforming towards federalism, an increased complexity under federated system is foreseeable, particularly in the face of changed political scenario and its players. It should have clear goals, financing policy and strict implementation plans for budget execution, task performance and achieving results as per planning. Additionally, collection of revenue, risk pooling and purchasing of services should be better integrated between central government and federated states to horn effectiveness and efficiency.

Disease management programme for diabetes mellitus in Nepal

INTRODUCTION

The prevalence of diabetes in elderly is being out-numbered and continuously rising. Individuals expect miracles from their health care providers as everything is curable in the eyes of the patient. Disease Management Programme for diabetes mellitus is sensible from the medical and economic point of view since it organizes care in multidisciplinary, multicomponent, proactive approach focusing on the whole course of a disease, using evidence-based standards of care that reduce health care costs and hospital stay. In Nepal, health care professionals today need to be aware that the patients are more and more aware about their disease and technology and their increased awareness demand innovative services.

METHODS

Authenticated data used for the purpose of projection were drawn purely from urban or rural hospital-based. To estimate the prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM), the data in pairs (i.e. prevalence and year) were fed into IDL - an inbuilt mathematical software program for best-fit regression. Literatures on DM prevalence and Disease Management Programme were examined.

RESULTS

The overall projection for the DM prevalence in Nepal suggests that the prevalence of diagnosed DM will be 12.73%, 15.11% and 17.49% in 2010, 2015 and 2020 respectively. Diabetes disease management programme appeared to be helpful in reduction of health care costs and hospital stay.

CONCLUSIONS

If the attributing factor for DM remains as it is today, many new cases of DM will be added each year. There is a need of effective disease management programme in the country. The increased level of awareness among the patients demands innovative services in future.

Health federalism: the role of health care professionals in Nepal

Nepal has entered from its unitary system into a new "Federal Democratic Republic State". The current constitution presents basic health care services as a fundamental right. The Ministry for Health and Population has been providing resources to meet health demands, but managers are wrestling to meet these demands. Persistent disparities between rural and urban and across regions resulted inferior health outcomes, e.g., life expectancy in an urban district like Bhaktapur is 71 years, whereas in the rural district of Mugu it is 44 years. The poor health and poor access to health care in the past systems prompted people to seek a different model. Ultimately, all political parties except one have agreed on federalism. The exact number of federal states that are going to be created is unknown. In federalism, all federated states have to assume certain relationships between the locality, the region, and the nation that apply not only in politics but in health care too. Managing changes in health care organization during the transitional period and after restructuring the unitary Nepal into federal states should be carefully planned. In case, if new system also fails to deliver necessary health care services, the possibility of igniting of dissatisfaction, public unrest and even disintegration cannot be ignored. In order to outline a structure and give life to a health care system under federalism, health care professionals need to engage themselves seriously.

Nepalese kidney transplant recipient in a follow up clinic: related and unrelated living donor

A cohort retrospective study was conducted on all follow up kidney transplant recipients at Transplant Follow up Clinic from June 16, 2003 to July 15, 2008. The main objective of this study was to find out the demographic pattern of the kidney transplant recipients and type of donors. Among 452 recipients, the transplantation were done in India (449), Germany (2) and in the USA (1) with male to female ratio of 3:1. Kidney donors were unrelated 315 (69.69%), related 134 (29.43%) and some did not disclose 4 (0.88%). Most of the kidney transplantation (93.75%) were done in 45 different hospitals in India and about three quarters (71.7%) of them were operated in the private hospitals in various states of India; only 2 (4.16%) in Germany and 1 (2.08%) in USA. Newar was the largest population 142 (31.4%) and second largest group was Mangol 124 (27.4.4%) that comprised of Gurung, Rai, Magar, Tamang etc. Brahmins were the third largest population 91 (20.1%). In this study the youngest recipients was 14 years and the oldest was of 75 years. The mean age was 41 (SD 13.84). This study showed that 35 (7.7%) died, 8 (1.7%) reported rejection and underwent re-transplantation and 238 patient have lost follow up till early 2008. Kidney transplantation should be promoted as it is cheaper compared to dialysis in the long run. This study found that unrelated kidney donors have outnumbered the related donors in Nepalese kidney transplant recipients which emphasize the importance of unambiguous documentation and also a provision of lawful action against the middle-men if found involved in an illegal kidney related activities in Nepal. Organ transplantation is an important integral part of human health and should be regularize and promote lawfully to protect humans from trafficking for kidney, possible kidnapping, killing and stealing.