Ten Years of the Nepal Ambulance Service: Successful and Sustainable Efforts

Abstract

We describe the evolution of the nonprofit Nepal Ambulance Service (NAS) in a narrative of its 10-y history, presenting geographical, social, cultural, and financial considerations that permeated the development of NAS. We gathered narrative information from the NAS leadership and partners to detail key organizational considerations regarding the implementation and maintenance of the prehospital system in Nepal. We describe the response of NAS to the 2015 earthquake and summarize transport data for 6 mo before and 6 mo after the event. The data collected included the date and time of calls received, time to ambulance dispatch, on-scene time, time to arrival at the hospital, time until the ambulance crew was back in service, patient age and sex, chief complaints, and work shift time of the ambulance crew. To characterize the time to response and transport after the 2015 earthquake, we present the means and standard deviations of the time intervals. There was an overall increase in calls and, specifically, trauma-related calls after the 2015 earthquake. The time from a call placed to dispatch was stable, approximately 2 min, throughout the period, whereas the time from dispatch to the scene and arrival at the scene varied widely. We discuss the response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The NAS provided care to 1230 patients with COVID-19. The descriptive data show how well NAS responded to a major national disaster and the recent pandemic.

Keywords: Nepal; emergency medicine; global health; prehospital care; sustainable development.