Bumburi Medical Clinic, Bumburi, Nepal Background Bumburi is a small village at around 2,000m in the lower Khumbu region of the Nepal Himalaya. The villages of the upper Khumbu are the ones that many trekkers and climbers pass through on their way to Everest Base Camp. However, Bumburi and its surrounding villages are just south of the normal starting point for the Everest Base camp trek. Therefore they have missed out on a large part of the tourist income and consequent development. Over the last decade, the Moving Mountains Trust has worked to help establish opportunities for sustainable development and income generation in the area. This is a long term and integrated approach with many contributing facets including support for Education, Infrastructure, Health Promotion and Healthcare. When Moving Mountains started working in the Bumburi area, the nearest basic medical clinic was two days walk and an away in the village of Lukla. The path between the villages is a long winding trail which skirts the deep valley, and requires a number of steep ascents and descents and a net altitude gain of over 800m. If the patient’s sickness required anything beyond basic care, they would need to travel to a larger town or city such as Kathmandu. This was financially impossible for most villagers.
Early Progress Since 2009 Moving Mountains have been organizing an annual medical camp in Bumburi. These camps see overseas medical students fundraise and then travel to the village along with a qualified Nepali doctor to provide a week of free health and medical consultations to members of the community. In this way, hundreds of minor ailments have been addressed along with a number of more serious and long-term conditions. Along with many other schemes and initiatives, the medical camps have helped to raise the quality of life in the villages and consequently to drive their continued rejuvenation and stem the flow of the young and skilled villagers to the towns and cities in the lowlands.