History

Nepal Trust Austria was founded in 2002 by passionate mountain climbers, Nepal lovers and a diplomatic engineer named Eduard Frosch, Helmut Schmoed, and Uwe Wobrovski.
The organisation originally aimed at developing a sustainable health care system in the most north-western district of Nepal called Humla, with a special emphasize on the administrative district Simikot.
Together with our local partner organisation NAPO – Nepal Austria Partner Organization, we are moving towards our goal step by step: the hospital in Simikot was saved from decay, renovated, and equipped with essential medical equipment. Furthermore, we built the first maternity ward in the whole region, funded the salaries of medical staff, and facilitated free medical care for the economically poor.

For many years, Nepal Trust Austria also arranged health camps, for which doctors and nurses from around the world were sent into secluded districts in order to provide medical treatment to over 8000 impoverished people.

In the meantime, the Nepalese government began to realize the importance of basic medical care and allocates doctors now, nurses and midwives in Humla – hence we could shift our focus.

The treatment of patients uncovered that many medical issues were not to be solved or prevented without changes in the social structure of the local population. For instance, many highly pregnant women are not released from hard physical labour, what often causes uterus prolapses. Other significant health issues are results from banning girls and women and their small children from the house during her menstruation as well as after she has given birth.
Mothers and their newborns often suffer from frostbites, lung pneumonia,

and other infections due to sleeping outside. Long-term negative health consequences are also seen from physical, sexual, and mental abuse or violence against women.

In 2015, the organisation decided to change its emphasis and focuses from now on on the causes of avoidable health issues. By the means of a participatory research appraisal, socio-ecological problems of women and girls in Humla were determined. This way resolutions could be developed jointly with the target group and included in our new project Mahila Avaz – Women’s Voice.