Identifying health as a fundamental human right, the Constitution of Nepal protects individuals’ rights to free basic health services, emergency health service, and access to information about health. On November 30, the Government of Nepal, therefore, secured US$495 million to lay the foundation stones for 396 hospital buildings in order to provide basic health services at the local level to all.
Addressing an event organized to lay the foundation stone of the building at the Bajrabarahi Chapagaun Hospital in the Godawari Municipality of Lalitpur district, the Finance Minister of Nepal, Bishnu Prasad Poudel, said the funding was for hospitals to be constructed at the municipal level across the country with an additional US$684,411 per hospital for the construction of infectious disease hospitals across all seven provinces.
Meanwhile, laying down the foundation stone of the emergency building and communicable disease service building at the Bharatpur Hospital in Chitwan district, the Minister for Health and Population of Nepal, Bhanubhakta Dhakal, said the program would mean that no municipality in the country would be without a hospital. The construction of the 396 local level hospitals would ensure easy access to health services for all citizens. He also announced that the government had allocated a budget to upgrade hospitals across the country. The government is working to provide free health care for poor and needy citizens, he added.
According to Madhav Lamsal, senior health administrator at the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) of Nepal, the construction of the new hospitals will begin within the current fiscal year and will be completed within two years. Stating that the hospital building campaign is an exemplary work within the health sector, he said that 52 hospitals with five beds, 109 hospitals with 10 beds, and 235 hospitals with 15 beds will be constructed across the country.
The secured construction budget includes US$684,411 for the building of a 5-bed hospital, US$ 941,065 for a 10-bed hospital, and US$1.53 million for a 15-bed hospital. According to the government’s plans, 34 basic hospitals will be constructed in Sudurpaschim, 60 in Lumbini, 28 in Karnali, 53 in Gandaki, 19 in Bagmati provinces and there will be 32 in Province 1 and 20 in Province 2.
- Construction of these hospitals has been initiated as per the government’s policies and programs of the current fiscal year 2020/21 which envisaged that it would build 5 to 15-bed basic hospitals and all at the local level.
- The Ministry of Health and Population of Nepal has been guided by the Second Long Term Health Plan (1997–2017) that had the vision of creating a health care system with equitable access and quality services for both rural and urban areas.
- Currently, of 753 municipalities in Nepal, only 104 have hospitals of different levels.
- The government aims to build at least one 15-bed hospital in 649 municipalities within the next two years.
It is vital for the three tiers of government, i.e. local, provincial, and federal, to follow the Nepal Health Infrastructure Development Standards (NHIDS, 2017) that provide an opportunity to reorganize the health system for the optimal delivery of high-quality health services. It forms the basis for a rational plan to establish and upgrade health institutions on the basis of such factors as accessibility, catchment population, geography, availability of suitable land, condition of existing or nearby facilities, and morbidity statistics. This approach, therefore, reduces the potential for the haphazard construction of new or the upgrading of existing facilities. NHIDS has recommended that adequate numbers of skilled human resources are recruited and deployed and that the procurement of medical equipment is well planned to assist the government to forecast the infrastructure required for the three tiers of government in Nepal.
Since the health sector in Nepal serves as a foundation for the fulfillment of many of its international commitments including the Sustainable Development Goals, the success of this initiative in providing easy access to health services will help Nepal to graduate to Lower Middle-Income Country status by 2022. It is equally important for Nepal to ensure that improvements to the health sector, including the construction of these hospitals, are well coordinated in respect of health infrastructure, related equipment, and the recruitment of sufficient human resources.
