We are very pleased to have formed an alliance of capability and objective with a wonderful dentist in Kathmandu, Nepal in 2014. Dr Tsering Gurung has a very modern and productive dental clinic in Kathmandu and this has enabled us to send some of our dental volunteers from Ladakh to Kathmandu to do screening camps at several of the humanitarian organizations that we’ve supported for a number of years. In particular, our team of dentists from Dundee Scotland screened all of the 150+ young Nepalese children who have been rescued from deplorable situations in corrupt orphanages by The Umbrella Foundation. Dr Tsering Gurung treated all of those young people that our team identified as having serious dental conditions in her clinic located nearby the Umbrella Foundation hostels where the kids were living.
Dr Tsering Gurung
Based on that successful collaboration and our shared objective of providing basic dental care for people who cannot afford to pay for even the most basic oral health care, The Himalayan Dental Project and Dr Gurung formed a mutually beneficial alliance. Our second major cooperative effort was in conjunction with 20 bright young students from The Jakarta International School that had come to Nepal for a trekking expedition as well as a motivation to actively participate in a meaningful community service project. We worked together with Dr Gurung in organizing a dental camp for almost 500 people that came from local schools, Buddhist monasteries and orphanages and were able to identify over 150 of them that had serious dental conditions that Dr Gurung and our resident dentist in Ladakh, Dr Marie Nordstrom were able to treat at Dr Gurung’s clinic in Kathmandu.
Right before the winter season in 2014 made trekking to the high Tibetan plateau region of Manang located on the north side of the Annapurna Himalayas in Nepal impossible, Dr Gurung and Dr Nordstrom led a group from the Manang Woman’s Empowerment group to Manang for a dental camp that successfully provided dental treatments to people living in that extremely remote area of Nepal. We certainly look forward to building on this friendship and alliance in the years to come.