Asthma Journey

This journey began, when an elderly lady after bearing a labor pain for more than 48 hours gave birth of her 10th child, in one of the remote and hilly district of Nepal. At the age of 4, the child started to follow his father on his way to nearby public school. The fun of listening story, getting chocolate on the way to school and the attention as a son of teacher, enticed him to attend the school regularly. From school’s examinations to different local and district level extracurricular activities like elocution, essay, and poetry competition used to bring him opportunities to amass award/trophies. During these heydays, only thing that used to trouble him a lot was the asthma attack of his mother. Sitting beside her bedside he used to pray

Witnessing the death of child because of preventable disease like cholera and typhoid, outbreaks of bacterial infections in maternity ward of hospitals and deaths of those newly born babies used to wreck his heart. Irrational prescribing of the drugs, sell of broad spectrum antibiotics over the counter without prescription and over-diagnosis of diseases using less specific test methods used to persuade him to do something to stop this and make the difference. He used to interact with the service seekers, pharmacists and health care professionals to know their opinions and realize the gaps on their perceptions, understandings and goals. In this journey, he realized that the gravity of the problem associated with epidemics and diagnosis of infectious diseases and the role he can play as microbiologist to revert this scenario. The road to travel and the tasks to complete is becoming clear for him each day.

With strong determination of changing this scenario one day, after nearly a year; he came back to capital city to pursue Masters. The mantra was; “to learn to become that person who will change the scenario associated with infectious diseases in Nepal”. He has many questions in his mind, each day in the class or in the library or in the internet, he used to search for the answers. He spent nearly three years doing the same only to find out that he now became topper in his college securing more than

He was searching for a career which can give him an opportunity to utilize the knowledge he has gained so far and learn the skills as the skill part was wanting in his Master’s level curriculum. After a year, he was selected as a lecturer in a reputed tertiary care hospital and referral center, Patan Hospital, which has recently began new journey as a Medical College. In this college, each day, he guides medical students, and try to make them understand how they can help in the outcome of infectious diseases by doing small things like proper counseling of patient, filling the requisitions forms & maintaining hand hygiene etc. In the laboratory as a Microbiologist he performs microscopy & staining, culture and antimicrobial susceptibility of the isolate and assists health care professionals for prompt diagnosis and treatment of infectious