Archives: South Asia

Meet Muna & Babesh Babesh is a five-year-old boy receiving treatment for stage four neuroblastoma in Kathmandu, Nepal. His family’s home is in Itahari, nine hours by car from Kathmandu. After Babesh was diagnosed, he and his mother Muna moved to a small apartment in Kathmandu so that he could receive treatment. His father works […]

Meet Radha Radha Devi Shaud, from rural Nepal, was with her daughter in the jungle cutting firewood (used for cooking) when she slipped and broke her leg while climbing down from a tree. Her young daughter and her daughter-in-law helped to get her up, and carried her on their backs to the market. From there, […]

Meet Dipesh Dipesh Rai is 17 years old and lives in central Nepal. When he was 14, he started experiencing severe headaches and fever, his feet felt numb, and “I felt my heart trembling.” His family took him first to a shaman, then to the closest hospital, which referred him to a hospital in Kathmandu. […]

Meet Kharsang Kharsang is 14 years old from rural Nepal and has been living with rheumatic heart disease (RHD) for several years. She used to feel regular joint pain and over time, her face and legs began to swell. After regular vomiting and difficulty breathing, Kharsang visited a health facility and was told she had […]

Meet Dilu Dilu Dhami, a 46-year-old farmer, was working in a field near his home in Dueursen, Nepal when a bear attacked him. The bear charged and swiped at him, causing a deep gash across his face. “There was a lump of flesh dangling from my face,” he said. Dilu’s injuries were not disabling and […]

In honor of World Cancer Day 2018, NCD Synergies and the Lancet NCDI Poverty Commission are sharing video narratives of four people living with cancer in rural Ethiopia and Nepal. Their stories, part of the Voices of NCDI Poverty initiative, highlight the importance of addressing the equity gap in access to cancer services among the world's poorest populations.

This paper seeks to provide researchers, including those performing studies focused on quality improvement of local health systems, with a methodology for identifying worst-off populations.

Published by Jan Swasthya Sahygog (JSS), a health NGO in central India, the Atlas serves as a collection of narratives capturing the patient journey of specific ailments and the complexity in which they present themselves in rural Chhattisgarh, India. Supplemented with photo essays, commentaries and epidemiological figures, the Atlas explores the burden of disease in this setting and repositions prevailing understandings of illness and poverty. NCDs and injuries are featured throughout the work.

As one of the first products related to the NCDI Poverty Commission, researchers have recently released a paper which presents evidence that among the world's poorest populations, the burden of death and disability from CVD affects people at a much younger age than in high-income countries and is caused mainly by infectious and environmental risk factors.

Published in June 2016 by commissioners and advisers of the Lancet NCDI Poverty Commission, this paper summarizes what is known about the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease among the world’s poorest people and evaluates the relevance of global targets for CVD control in this population.