Karma Health

We currently serve 30 thousand people in one municipality. If we receive the Elevate Prize funding we will be able to expand our impact to 150 thousand people across the district. 

The funds will cover expenses to match the investments by municipalities in Nepal towards a carefully designed package of healthcare implemented by our organization. Thus the funds will be used to sustain and expand our model to cover more people who are in need of dependable healthcare.

Expanding our work to other municipalities will also help us build a proof of concept of our model. It will also help gain enough traction in our efforts for the provincial and federal ministries to take notice so that we can advocate for a nationwide scaling of the components of our model.

My mother gave birth to me when she was 16, at our home, without any clinical support. During medical school, I realized how lucky we both were when I learned that as many as 15% of childbirths are complicated and need further medical attention. But during my work as a community doctor in rural Nepal, I realized that everybody is not as fortunate. I saw how precious lives were lost just because parents in rural Nepal couldn't recognize that their child had severe pneumonia, I saw how mothers and babies died when they couldn't reach the health centers on time, and how families couldn't afford as little as five dollars to buy antibiotics to save their loved ones.

At present access to life-saving healthcare depends on whether you are born in a rich household or poor, whether you belong to a particular ethnicity or race and whether you live in a rural community or in a city. This for me is a fundamental injustice and should not be left to the matter of fate. Therefore, I wish to be able to do something to ensure that quality healthcare is more accessible and affordable, even for those living in rural Nepal.

World Health Organization estimates that, globally, nearly 400 million people lack access to essential health services. Most of them were in low- and middle-income countries. In rural Nepal, where we work, health centers are hours away, beyond the hills or rivers. There may not be enough drugs or diagnostic services there, and even the health workers there may be absent. No wonder, as many as 50% of childbirths are high risk, and more than 85% of diabetics no treatment at all.

Karma Health is a non-profit that is prototyping a unique model of healthcare in partnership with a municipality in western Nepal. Our model has three main components. First, we upgrade existing government clinics by adding equipment and doctors so that the services available there approach the global standards of primary care. Second, we set up routine mobile clinics in remote villages catering to pregnant women and the elderly because they cannot walk for hours to reach health centers. Third, our professional CHWs visit patients and pregnant women at their homes regularly to check for high risks. They also support pregnant women to plan to give birth at a health facility.

Karma Health has been working on a model of healthcare delivery that brings together nonprofit, the community, and the government resources together to ensure affordable and quality healthcare for those in rural communities in Nepal. Unlike the government sector which has continuously failed to deliver results or the private sector which has not found it profitable to operate in rural areas or even charities which provide unsustainable islands of excellence, our model combines the efficiency of the private sector, the decency of non-profits, the stability of the state to deliver high-quality dependable healthcare. 

We do that by introducing smarter care delivery processes in healthcare like taking healthcare to where people are instead of waiting for them to receive healthcare, and by helping communities navigate the often obscure healthcare programs. To provide dependable care, we ensure the retention of health workers in rural areas through innovative incentives and increase the accountability of health workers by encouraging community-led monitoring.

We have been able to provide quality clinical services to a region where health services extremely inadequate. We deploy the only doctor(s) in the region who have served more than ten thousand people in the last three years. Lack of affordable health services closer to homes forces people to divert savings from important expenses like education, and livelihood as they have to pay for costly transport and healthcare costs in private facilities in the cities.

More than 95% of the pregnant women including those in the remote villages in the municipality received ultrasound screening for high risks because of our mobile health clinics. This has helped ensure that pregnant women know about some of the risks in advance to plan for safer childbirth. 

Similarly, our ten community health workers act as a bridge between the community and the health services. They walk door to door to provide individualized care to patients with chronic non-communicable diseases, and pregnant women. They make sure of treatment adherence by helping with life-style modification, and managing follow-up care. They also ensure that families of pregnant women plan elaborately to deliver at a health facility.