During a site visit to Nepal in 2017, representatives from the Ministry of Health, Organizations and academia met COHESION Project partners and funders to discuss research findings from Mozambique, Nepal and Peru; potential interventions and implications for health systems strengthening. We collected testimonies from Nepali stakeholders participating in the meeting.

Dr. Khem Bahadur Karki from the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC), spoke about the relevance of evidence based public health practice, the need to integrate NCDs and NTDs into the health systems and to focus on raising awareness at the community level of services available at the primary health care level (Watch his testimony here).

«At the community level, most of the communities they don’t know what sort of services we have in the primary health level and what sort of facilities we have… So we have to focus on the awareness level of where we can get the services»

Dr. Khem Bahadur Karki, Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC)

Dr. Usha Bhandari from the Nepal Office of the Swiss Development Cooperation Agency, talked about the significance of engaging policymakers in our discussions and about the importance of considering the impact on gender equality and social inclusion in the project activities. She also expressed her expectations on the project for the upcoming years. (Watch her testimony here).

«… this project, this research, and today’s discussion has invited policymakers of Nepal which is a very good platform to discuss because I can already see that in the next two years this project will bring more information and that will be really…useful information for policymakers.»

Dr Usha Bhandari, SDC Nepal office

Dr. Basudev Pandey from the Ministry of Health mentioned the Government need for evidence to provide quality services to the people. He also expressed his support to the COHESION Project. (Watch his testimony here).

«By generating evidence from this project and learning your experience from three country, it’ll definitely help for us to improve this type of evidence from the policy so that we can sustain this type of activity in the area and expand in the country».

Dr Basudev Pandey, Ministry of Health of Nepal

These testimonies and more videos are available in our Youtube playlist, click here.