Derailed by disaster back home

Published 2:57 pm Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Skies were crystal clear and the sun shined bright on the first day of May on San Juan Island.

What might have been an ideal day-trip to Friday Harbor was anything but for Shyam Rupakheti and wife Bimala, who could do little else but worry about the disaster of unimaginable proportions that waited back home.

“We’re worried about our family and worried about the hospital, and worried for the future of our country,” said Rupakheti, chief administrator of a hospital on the outskirts of Kathmandu and the only orthopedic medical facility in the country of Nepal. “This earthquake has put us 50 years back from where we were.”

Parents of two adult daughters and 12-year-old son, the couple had only been in the U.S. for only a few days, as part of a pre-arranged, monthlong vocational exchange for Rupakheti, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal shortly before noon Saturday, April 25. They found out that their children were okay and were able to connect with colleagues in Kathmandu, but that only lessened the anxiety to a small degree, for Rupakheti in particular, who would be leading the hospital and its response to the disaster if he weren’t stuck in the U.S., waiting for airline tickets to be rearranged.

“We didn’t eat or sleep for almost two days,” Rupakheti said.

Death toll mounts

In Nepal, the death toll had climbed to more than 7,000 as Monday, May 4, another 14,000 were listed as injured. The earthquake reportedly claimed the lives of another 72 people in India and 25 in China.

Capitol of Nepal, Kathmandu is home to a million people, and another three million live in the greater Kathmandu Valley. The hospital that Rupakheti manages, built with large support by Rotary Club International, is designed to be earthquake resistant and has remained one of the country’s few fully functioning medical facilities in the aftermath of the earthquake.

In spite of its durability, the hospital parking lot became a makeshift treatment center as fear of numerous aftershocks kept people outdoors, Rupakheti said. Only late last week had patients and staff began venturing back into the building, and the number of people in need of care is staggering, he said.

Doctors and nurses are working 13-hour shifts, many without pay, he added.

Vital resources, such as food, water, medical aid and fuel to run the hospital generators, remain in short supply, however, and Rupakheti and retired physician and friend Stephen Miller, an Anacortes resident and member of Rotary Club Fidalgo Island, were doing what they could to raise money to purchase supplies before Rupakheti flew back home.

A hospital colleague has been sending Rupakheti and Miller daily reports of activity at the hospital and condition of the staff and those in need of care.

“We need medicines and implants and food and support for these patients who are injured bodily and psychologically,” the colleague said in one report. “Some patients were buried in rubble and rescued, some had loved ones die in front of them. Nepalese are very poor. They cannot afford surgery. We need financial help for treating them.”

United by common bond

Built with financial support of Rotary, Nepal Orthopaedic Hospital opened in 1998 and has become a self-sustaining enterprise that devotes 25 percent of its care to charity and serves roughly 40,500 patients a year.

Miller and Rupakheti have been involved with the not-for-profit hospital since the beginning. Miller, a retired podiatrist, has made about a half-dozen medical mission to Nepal. Rupakheti was the hospital top accountant before taking over as chief administrator in 2008.

Getting airline tickets to Nepal can be troublesome even in the best of times, Miller said, and the international airport in Kathmandu has had to turn away some flights and its runway has shown signs of damage in the week since the earthquake struck.

Rupakheti had hoped to be home by the weekend; Bimala planned to stay in Arkansas with family, in part to make travel plans easier for her husband, before returning home. He’ll have several bags of medical supplies and some much-needed financial support from local Rotary clubs in tow, and Miller intends to continue the campaign.

“It’s the only orthopedic hospital in Nepal and all of its 100 beds are full,” Miller said. “And 45 percent of the patients there right now are waiting for surgery.”

— Editor’s note: Contact Rotary Club Fidalgo Island at: http://portal.clubrunner.ca/272/, or Miller at, 360-293-8683.