Disabilities from Nepal quake linger two years on

KATHMANDU — The day after Nepal was struck by a devastating earthquake, Samrat Basnet opened his doors to the wounded as hospitals overwhelmed with thousands of victims had to send away those without life-threatening injuries.

Two years on Basnet is still caring for a handful of the 22,000 Nepalis injured in the disaster, many left with preventable disabilities after slipping through the cracks of a woeful healthcare system.

With just seven health workers for every 10,000 people, Nepal was grossly ill-equipped when the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck on April 25, 2015, levelling whole villages and killing 9,000.

Small, impromptu clinics like Basnet's picked up the slack. As patients were discharged from hospitals to clear beds, Basnet tended to their injuries on mattresses in his cramped office in Kathmandu.

But the hospital engineer never imagined he would still be their carer two years on.

"There are hundreds of times I thought I could have stopped this, I could have gone back to my normal life," he said. "But when I see these patients, I cannot do that."

After the earthquake, a seemingly endless stream of injured poured into Kathmandu needing treatment.

Once patched up, the hospitals sent the injured away. Many had nowhere to go or were sent back to damaged homes where they could not receive necessary follow up care.

"In the districts, there was not any rehabilitation or surgery facilities, so the people who required rehabilitation didn't get it," said Sunil Pokhrel, a physiotherapist with the charity Handicap International.