Let’s do it ourselves

Nepal must have an action-plan for self-sufficiency in key health measures like HIV-control.

As one of the poorest and least developed countries, it was only right for Nepal to seek international support for its vital health and education programmes. And it has been getting plenty of health-help over the years. Yet some recent troubling global developments also highlight the need for Nepal to achieve self-sufficiency in the funding of such programmes. The dramatic cuts of the US government funds supporting targeted health measures in poor countries have also hit Nepal hard. To take just two recent examples, years of Nepal’s achievements in immunisation and in HIV/AIDS control could be reversed after the fund cuts. Nepal’s immunisation programme is considered the most successful in South Asia, helping avoid hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and many more disabilities. Yet the US fund cuts for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), which meets around half of Nepal’s immunisation needs, threaten to unravel the progress in prevention of diseases like polio, measles, rubella and Japanese Encephalitis.