[Skip to Content]

Upstate resident establishes nonprofit medical school in Nepal; Upstate surgeon travels there on medical mission

kathmanduThe hospital in Nepal that recently hosted a contingent of Syracuse orthopedic surgeons on an "Operation Walk" medical mission has a strong connection to Upstate. A doctor who trained at Upstate created a nonprofit medical school at Patan Hospital in Kathmandu.

The Patan Academy of Health Sciences was designed to improve the health of the people of Nepal, especially those who are poor and living in rural areas where there may be only one physician to serve 30,000 villagers. The academy is situated at the hospital, which has been operating since the 1950s.

Timothy Damron MD was part of an "Operation Walk" Syracuse team of 30 health care providers who took a 10-day trip to Nepal in November to provide free hip and knee replacements to people with severe arthritis and other joint diseases. Among the surgeons were Drs. Brett and Seth Greenky, Upstate alumni and brothers who run the orthopedic surgery program at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center.

"Operation Walk" is a national group that provides orthopedic care in medically under-served areas throughout the world. The Greenkys started a Syracuse chapter of the group, which accepts donations of equipment and money to cover expenses for the trip. All of the medical providers volunteer their time.

Damron speaks about the trip Sunday, Jan. 22 on Health Link on Air, Upstate's weekly radio show which airs from 9 to 10 a.m. Sundays on WSYR. "It was one of the best things I have ever done," he says of the whirlwind trip that included about 60 joint replacements on about 30 patients at Patan Hospital.  Damron is also a professor of cell and developmental biology at Upstate.

He says the hospital staff in Nepal includes nurses and physical therapists who help with  post-surgical care and rehabilitation. The "Operation Walk" team provided some additional training and also taught family members what to do for patients because "the families do a lot of the care afterward, there."

Damron knew about an Upstate connection with the hospital. A colleague, David Lehmann MD has made annual trips to Nepal for the past eight years to the Patan Academy of Health Sciences, the brainchild of Arjun Karki MD.

Karki wanted to create a medical school that would provide scholarships and government subsidies to train Nepalese to be doctors, with the understanding that they would then practice medicine in their home communities, says Lehmann, who helped train Karki at Upstate in the mid-1990s. Karki got his medical degree from Tribhuvan University Institute of Medicine and did his residency in internal medicine at Upstate. Today he is the only board certified pulmonary critical care specialist in all of Nepal.

Karki stayed in touch with Lehmann, a professor of medicine and pharmacology at Upstate, and Lehmann helped establish the pharmacology curriculum at Karki's academy, which opened its doors to 35 students in 2009.

Read the blog about the Operation Walk trip.


Listen to Timothy Damron MD's radio interview on Health Link on Air.

Top