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THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 2020
Binaj Gurubacharya
BHAKTAPUR, NEPAL (AP) — When
the new mother died in the hospi-
tal last month — the irst person to
succumb to COVID19 in Nepal —
her days-old baby was moved to an
isolation ward.
But thewoman’s body remained.
Ambulance drivers and hospital
workers, fearful of the contagion,
refused to move the corpse from
the hospital morgue to the crema-
torium, where it could be burned in
keeping with Hindu tradition.
And so authorities called
upon RNA16 — three men and a
woman in signature blue vests,
renowned for their selless volun-
teer work in Bhaktapur, a UNESCO
world heritage site known as the
“city of temples” just east of the
capital, Kathmandu.
RNA16 stands for “Rescue and
Awareness” and the 16 kinds of di-
sasters they have prepared to deal
with, from Nepal’s devastating 2015
earthquake to road accidents. But
their unique services in the epi-
demic amount to a much greater
sacriice, said doctors, hospital of-
icials and civic leaders.
“They are truly our heroes and
doing work that no one is willing
to do. When even health workers
are scared, they have dared to help
people in the pandemic,” said Kiran
Thapa, a city council member.
Nepal volunteers become local heroes during
virus pandemic
They have received inancial
support from businesses, and have
been lauded by doctors and civic
leaders for aiding a healthcare sys-
tem ill-equipped for the pandemic.
Since Nepal reported its irst
cases, the team has been camping
in a tent pitched on the roof of a
hospital pharmacy in Bhaktapur.
“As soon as the lockdown was
declared, we decided to camp here
and help out because we were ex-
pecting a big low of people com-
ing in for tests,” team leader Arun
Sainju told The Associated Press
from their leaky tent.
Sainju, 31, is a safety instructor
at a school. He formed the team
in the aftermath of the 2015 earth-
quake. Sick with a high fever, he left
his hospital bed to help the over-
whelmed staff.
“I was separating the dead bod-
ies from the wounded ones and cate-
gorising them for the doctors,” Sain-
ju said. “This is when my life turned,
and I decided to help people.”
Nhuja Kaiju, 20, is a computer
operator at a government ofice,
and Rajesh Gaiju, 28, is a history
and culture teacher. Only Punam
Karmacharya, a 22-year-old nurse,
has any formal medical training.
As the virus raged in neighbour-
ing China earlier this year, the team
trained with the Nepalese army to
better prepare for the pandemic,
including how to handle viral sam-
ples and infected bodies.
And when most of the city’s irst
responders refused to transport
suspected COVID19 patients, RNA-
16 converted a borrowed truck into
a makeshift ambulance and started
ielding calls from around Bhak-
tapur and surrounding villages to
pick people up for virus tests.
Apart from the tent they sleep
in, they set up two tents within the
hospital grounds where they and
hospital nurses collect virus test
samples. Up to 80 people come to
the hospital for tests daily. The vol-
unteers help them line up, collect
information and take their samples.
Then last month, they were
deployed after the young moth-
er’s death. “When we reached the
morgue, there was blood spattered
all over the loor and the body was
also not properly wrapped. We had
to repack the body in a body bag,
lift it in the vehicle and drive it to
the Pashupati temple for crema-
tion,” Sainju said.
Even at the crematorium, the
staff would not go near the body,
so the team loaded it into the fur-
nace while the family stood at a
distance. RNA16, said Sainju, had
become “the funeral procession for
the lady.”
Afterward, they quarantined
themselves for 11 days, during
which Sainju felt constant anxiety.
His concern: In their ab-
sence, people in need of help
were suffering.
Punam Karmacharya of the RNA 16 volunteer group, carries a box containing swab samples of patients to deliver
it to a testing centre, at a hospital in Bhaktapur, Nepal. PHOTO: AP