We were not able to go to the hospital to look around the microbiology laboratory. This is something Patan hospital is strict about and so last week Sabina and Rajendra from the Oxford Clinical Research Unit came to us instead. They brought Dr Tom Darton too who works in the Oxford Vietnam research unit and was visiting Nepal to help set up a big study to understand the numbers of people carrying and affected by the bacteria within Patan in Nepal, but also in parts of Malawi

There's a feeling of sheer satisfaction for Sanu Maiya today as she held her newborn granddaughter. Her daughter Asha was also relived to have a safe delivery in the Hospital. Soon after the delivery, the skilled nurses covered the baby with a warm towel. The practitioner clamped the umbilical cord in two places and then cut between the two clamps. She collected a tube of blood from the cord to check baby's blood type and may use it for other tests as well. After the baby's t

On the 16th of April the Jeewan Jal participants met with women from women's groups in Patan to talk about life, health and water. Conversations spanned folktales including the mythical beasts of the stone water spouts, stories of ill health and traditional as well as biomedical healing. We heard about how things have changed in recent years with competition for water between locals and more recent settlers to Patan, comparisons of life before and after marriage when some of

I never thought I could bring my emotions into a beautiful poem but session on April 27 given by one of our member Malashree and her friend Samip on “Expression of Art: Poem” opened door for those who were interested in writing poem but could not. Our morning began with adding adjective and metaphors before our name like Daredevil Devashree or Red Runner Ragendra. We were going to experiment with our most close to heart object and I kept wondering how our object into words th

The day started in a story creation mode. We played a storytelling game where the story proceeds in a circle and each player has to say a sentence at a time to create a story. The first story created had various moments of happiness, sadness, romance and fun built in by every other sentence. Then we added another component in a same game where, second player and after has to start sentence with, “Yes, and”. This round of game had similar enjoyment as the first round. For the

Last week we were visited my two research nurses working in the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit at Patan Hospital. We sat down with them to talk about their work, lives and water...again doodling felt like the right way to document the conversations. The Jeewan Jal team decided that a research nurse would be a great archetype for a story. A nurse is someone ordinary, relatable, does important work and has connections with people within the community and the hospital