1 |
|
Page 1
“...the Journal of the
Association for Nepal and
Himalayan Studies
Volume 37 | Number 2 Article 8
December 2017
Himalayan Trauma: Administrative Thrombosis
and Citizens’ Response
Robert E. Beazley
Cornell University, reb265(a)cornell.edu
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya
Recommended Citation
Beazley, Robert E. (2017) "Himalayan Trauma: Administrative Thrombosis and Citizens’ Response," HIMALAYA, the Journal of the
Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: Vol. 37 : No. 2, Article 8.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss2/8
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
Macalester College
Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
This Perspectives is brought to you for free and open access by the
DigitalCommons(2)Macalester College at DigitalCommons(2)Macalester
College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of
the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized...”
|
|
2 |
|
Page 2
“...like to thank Austin Lord and Sienna Craig for their review of the article and their many
insightful comments and suggestions. He also would like to express a deep sense of gratitude and respect for
all the volunteers^ doctors, and nurses he had the privilege to work with and for the support both monetary
and spiritual that manifested as a result of social media virtual participant experiences from around the world.
This perspectives is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies:
http:/ / digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss2/8...”
|
|
3 |
|
Page 3
“...institutional dysfunction.
Further, he shows how these two types of
media played a critical role in facilitating
communication between grassroots aid
initiatives and earthquake affected people and
their families and friends, not only in Kathmandu
but also in neglected mountainous areas as well.
The author uses a personal, reflexive approach
to help situate the distinct experiences of
earthquake affected people including trauma
patients, people with disabilities, and volunteer
aid workers.
Keywords: Nepal, earthquake, trauma, citizens' response, health
care, disaster aid and relief.
Introduction
Sudan Gurung arrived by scooter at the Bir National
Trauma Center on April 25, 2015, carrying a man with
an injured leg. The entrance to the Trauma Center was
littered with injured people waiting for help. In the wake
of the 7.8 earthquake that occurred earlier that day, the
already overloaded healthcare system was itself in crit-
ical condition (HPS 2015; Pandey 2016; Sifferlin 2015;
Thomas 2015). While...”
|
|
4 |
|
Page 4
“...had arrived in Nepal in April 2014 as a Cornell University
Natural Resources Department PhD candidate on a
Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad
Fellowship. I set up my Kathmandu residence at Ram’s
Rooms, near the Boudhanath Stupa, which I used as a base
when not conducting social science research at my site in
northern Rasuwa District near the Tibetan border.
Within the first 45 days of the initial earthquake, Nepal
experienced 553 aftershocks of local magnitude greater
than 4.0 on the Richter scale (Adhikari et al. 2015), not to
mention the major aftershocks greater than magnitude
4.0 and the main aftershock of May 12, 2015 (magnitude
7.3) which created a whole new round of destruction and
chaos, especially in rural areas northeast of Kathmandu.
The aftershocks continued and are still occurring presently
in Nepal.1
Like Sudan, I was caught off-guard by the earthquakes,
despite all of the ways that the possibility of natural
disaster always looms large in Nepal. And, like Sudan...”
|
|
5 |
|
Page 7
“...favor of Bir Hospital.
As post-earthquake days passed, sanitation became a big
concern. At one point, more than 100 decomposing corpses
were stacked behind the Trauma Center waiting to be iden-
tified by a family member before they could be removed
and cremated. Inside the Trauma Center, the staff could
not keep up with the increasing number of patients. Again,
institutional politics was to blame, as the staff had been
hired exclusively by one of the administrators and, as in
many institutions in Nepal, consisted mostly of his friends,
relatives, family members, and those he owed favors to for
helping him get his administrative posting. Most of these
individuals were neither well trained nor able to cope with
the situation in which they found themselves.
Outside the front entrance of the Trauma Center, a col-
lection center was set up for donations of food, water,
clothing, and medical supplies. Some medications were
provided free of charge, but as supplies dwindled many
volunteers used their...”
|
|
6 |
|
Page 8
“...Nirmala, was
more reserved but equally charming. The two became best
friends and ‘star’ patients of Handicap International.4
Their stories were so compelling and their personalities so
charismatic that they were featured in more than 20 media
articles. Here is one example from a traditional media
source, and an example of a powerful “victim” narrative
that created a sense of virtual participant-experience for
the consuming public:
The sounds in the trauma ward of Bir Hospital
two months after the Nepal earthquake were hard
to take: The screams of patients suffering with
fractured bones, or mourning for amputated limbs,
as helpless family members attempted to comfort
them. I couldn’t bring myself to take out my camera
and point it at people here, so instead I tried to
comfort them, too, and listen to their stories. I was
drawn to a corner of the ward where a young girl
missing a leg was smiling while doing physiothera-
py. She was the only patient with a smile. That was
the first time since the...”
|
|
7 |
|
Page 9
“...of supplying aid and resources to communities in
earthquake-affected districts across their country.
One example of such mobilization—and its intersections
with the social media as well as diasporic Nepal—came
in the form of the Nepalese American Nurses Association
(NANA), a group based in New York City that, via Facebook,
began collecting funds and medical supplies in Jackson
Heights. In May 2015, NANA nurses flew to Nepal, where
they not only volunteered at the Trauma Center but also
hard hit areas outside the Kathmandu Valley. A NANA
Facebook post describes the sense of urgency and frustra-
tion that these nurses felt in reaction to the government’s
lethargic and ineffective post-earthquake response.
Njima [sic] Sherpa, a Nepal-born Manhattan nurse,
said what’s desperately needed in Nepal is more
medical trauma experts—and helicopters to reach
remote villages in a landlocked nation topped by
the forbidding Himalayas. Emergency funds from
abroad must counter the political instability,...”
|
|
8 |
|
Page 10
“...questionnaire to
document supply distribution. Practically speaking, this
meant that families had to relive their experiences each
time in order to be the recipients of aid.
In the case of Nepal, despite the tremendous worldwide
response, the competitive nature of large donor organi-
zations and the country’s geographically and politically
challenging landscape meant that significant gaps in
response existed. A great deal of effort was directed at
the delivery of immediate material aid, while the need for
psychological aid and counseling was largely overlooked
by the government in the first few months following the
earthquakes (Bhusal 2015; Kathmandu Post 2015a, 2015b;
Maharjan 2015).
Mental Health and Emotional Support
Mental health has been a chronically underdeveloped and
underfunded part of the Nepal healthcare system (WHO
2016; WHO-AIMS 2006). As Seale-Feldman and Upadhaya
(2015: para. 4) explain:
Nepali policymakers and international donors see this
moment as an opportunity to strengthen...”
|
|
9 |
|
Page 11
“...After
telling her about my volunteer work with I 2 We she and
others from RCW came to the Trauma Center to help.13
RCW brought encouragement and donations to patients
in the Trauma Center, and offered to teach them how
to play cricket after their recovery. I could see evidence
of this sort of positive impact through RCW’s in Nepal’s
post-earthquake moment, particularly in relation to mental
and emotional health.
I had begun working with RCW in the context of my
research on gender and mobility in Nepal. After recon-
necting with them in the Trauma Center, I helped RCW
organize a series of cricket training camps in communities
where I had conducted research in Nuwakot and Rasuwa,
and at camps for internally displaced persons (IDP) in
Nuwakot and Bhaktapur. These cricket camps helped
young people deal with the psychological trauma of the
disaster and its aftershocks, bringing together family
members and friends from different communities to cheer
them on. During these camps, RCW also spent time...”
|
|
10 |
|
Page 12
“...2015, Carpenter 2015,
Schorr and Warner 2015). The use of virtual mobility
technologies—social media, smartphones, radios, and
open source mapping—was instrumental in getting the
word out, recruiting volunteers, raising funds, network-
ing, and organizing logistics. The day of the earthquake
Mark Zuckerberg CEO of Facebook activated Safety Check
on Facebook—a way by which individuals in Nepal could
notify friends and family that they were safe. Within
hours, a team of volunteers led by Mark Turin (University
of British Columbia) translated this into Nepali, making the
function many times more effective in Nepal. More than
seven million people were marked safe and more than 150
million friends received notifications informing them that
their friends were safe during this period (Thapa 2016: 567;
Zuckerberg 2015; Wikipedia 2016).
Many volunteers gave friends and family real time updates
on Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and phone calls from the
Trauma Center, creating a virtual participant-observer...”
|
|
11 |
|
Page 13
“...points, let us return, in
closing, to the example of Tsering Tamang. Upon discharge
from Bir Trauma Center, she was refereed to an impro-
vised rehabilitation facility run by an organization called
the Nepal Healthcare Equipment Development Foundation
(NHEDF). Tellingly, this home, organized by volunteers
and supported through informal networks, was a citizen
response to non-functional and non-existent state insti-
tutions. Despite the free treatment Tsering received at
the Trauma Center, she did not have access to any state-
funded rehabilitation center. When I last visited Tsering
at the NHEDF rehabilitation center,13 14 she was all smiles,
having taken her fist tentative steps on her newly healed
leg. This moment represented the collective first steps of
all earthquake-affected people in Nepal: tentative, hopeful,
forward looking, and with a strong sense of determination.
Robert E. Beazley (M.S. Natural Resources, Cornell
University, 2013) is a PhD candidate in the Department
of Natural Resources...”
|
|
12 |
|
Page 14
“...Sanjay Gupta Performs Surgery
with Saw while Covering Nepal Earthquake. Telegraph.
co.uk, 28/4/ 2015. nepal/11567529/CNNs-Sanjay-Gupta-
performs-surgery-with-saw-while-covering-Nepal-
earthquake.html> (Accessed on 25 September 2015).
Acharya, Bibhav, Jasmine Tenpa, Poshan Thapa,
Bikash Gauchan, David Citrin, & Maria Ekstrand. 2016.
Recommendations from Primary Care Providers for
Integrating Mental Health in a Primary Care System in
Rural Nepal. BMC Health Services Research 16: 492.
Adey, Peter. 2006. if Mobility is Everything Then it is
Nothing: Towards a Relational Politics of (im)mobilities.
Mobilities 1(1): 75-94.
Adhikari, L.B., U.P. Gautam, B.P. Koirala, M. Bhattarai, T.
Kandel, R.M. Gupta, C. Timsina, N. Maharjan, K. Maharjan,
T. Dahal, R. Hoste-Colomer, Y. Cano, M. Dandine, A.
Guilhem, S. Merrer, P. Roudil, & L. Bollinger. 2015. The
Aftershock Sequence of the 2015 April 25 Gorkha-Nepal
Earthquake. Geophysics Journal International. 203(3)...”
|
|
13 |
|
Page 15
“...in Nepal. Cultural Anthropology-Hot Spots 1/10/
2015. nepal> (Accessed
on 6 June 2016).
Sharma, Sharan Prakash. 2013. Politics and Corruption Mar
Health Care in Nepal. The Lancet, 375(9731): 2063-2064.
Shenhar, Gili, Rebecca Adamcheck, and Michael Hopmeier.
2016. The Need for International Search and Rescue
(SAR) Teams during an Earthquake: Nepal Case Study.
Development in Practice, 26(7): 949-953.
Shrestha, Niranjan. 2016. Photographer’s View
of Young Nepal Quake Victims’ Friendship.
Associated Press, 22/04/2016. nepal-quake-victims-friendship> (Accessed on
6 June 2016).
Sifferlin, Alexandra. 2015. Inside Nepal’s Next Challenge:
Overflowing Hospitals. Time, 29/04/ 2015. nepal-earthquake-hospitals/> (Accessed on
6 June 2016).
Sullivan, Tim and Niranjan Shrestha. 2016. Girls
scarred by Nepal quake...”
|
|