Cute Hut in NepalShankar and me
Dear Readers,
Being involved in Educational Workshops globally, I come across a lot of amazing people from all over the world. Our Interburns Leadership retreats and courses provide us a great opportunity to meet the real global leaders especially in lower and middle income (LMIC) countries and we mutually learn lessons of life from each other.
Shankar was one of the participant in our recently held retreat in Sylhut. There are many lessons to learn from his story.
I thought, its worth sharing it with all of you…
Dr Shankar Man Rai has established a surgical outreach team in Nepal with the help of US-based humanitarian organizations.He has helped gain treatment for more than 5,000 patients since 1992, many of them are children with cleft lips or palates or burns.
Shankar is the son of a Nepalese army soldier and brother to four Gurkha Brigade soldiers who paid his way through school. Rai was the first in his family to receive an education as a boy. He hiked two hours every day at 6,000-foot elevations from his remote village to the nearest school.
Today, it still requires a three-day walk from his village to reach the nearest road and 18-hour bus ride to make it to Katmandu. But in the late 1970s, when Rai left home to go to college and then medical school in the Nepalese capital, he walked the entire way. It took 14 days, he says.
Shankar’s rural origins are the source of his dedication to the poor. Rai is a very modest man, but he has done incredible things in Nepal.Shankar says he spends two or three days a week visiting rural hospitals, performing surgeries and rounding up patients at clinics outside of Katmandu in 52 of the 75 Nepalese districts that remain open to travel. Because of his links with Global Humanitarian organization, Rai helps pay for the parents of postoperative children to come and stay at the district centers for extended speech and physiotherapy.
Shankar and his team are opening a small unit for Burn Care in Nepal. He has asked for the Interburns help. We are proud to help him. He along with some members of his team are due to go to Indore, our Interburns Training Centre for the SE Asia region, for a brief observational trip and training for his staff. Attached are some pics of Shankar (see above).