The three-month-old son of Isra Gurdhami of Kedarsyun Rural Municipality-5 Bahuradi had diarrhea and fever since birth. After knowing that it is treated in the neighboring Bungal Municipality, she reached the house of Krishna Kunwar of Bungal Municipality-5 Tamtana in the second week of December. Kunwar gave injection (needle) to both mother and baby.

Kunwar is such a person, who without any training related to health and medical  are operating . She returned home after the same kunwar told her that the child would be completely healthy in a few days. But instead of getting better, the child started getting sicker. Rapid breathing and increased fever. Panicked, she informed her brother-in-law Pratap Gurdhami.

Both of them took the baby to Khiratadi health post in Bungal municipality last Sunday. The child's condition has become very serious. According to the doctor, treatment is not possible here. If you want to take him to Dadeldhura, Pratap said, 'While taking him to Dadeldhura, he died on the way.' He also took his son to a medical center in Vizgada for treatment on Saturday after it looked like a boil on his tongue. "We took the medical on Saturday." The medicine there didn't help . After the child collapsed, we took him to the hospital (Khiratadi health post) the next day,' said Prem, 'by the time he was taken to the hospital, he had died.'

These two incidents were publicized in the same week in which the patient died because he did not go to the health post on time and was treated at the local medical center. Even though such incidents happen regularly in Bajhang, most of them are not public. Health workers say that such incidents are repeated frequently when fake health workers and illegally opened medicals administer drugs randomly. 

Isra Gudharmi's son was referred to Dadeldhura after his son's health examination. Dil Bahadur Gurdhami said that the child may have died due to giving an injection that was not suitable for him. On top of that, because they did not receive any health education, there was a risk during the treatment,' he said He claimed that he did. "They bring medicines from India once a year and give them randomly." Patients don't know whether it is expired or not,' he said, 'Due to the indiscriminate administration of banned drugs in Nepal, the lives of patients are at risk.' Photos: Vasant Pratap Singh/Kantipur

He said that there are more than 50 such medical and drug stores in Bungal Municipality and said that more than 70 percent of the drug stores do not have general medical knowledge and are operating without completing any legal process. Some of them have even carried it in their bags. "They are seen injecting themselves in tea shops," he said.

Not only in Bungal, there are illegal drug shops and fake doctors all over the district. Let alone the remote villages, even in the headquarter where there is round-the-clock surveillance by the regulatory agencies, even though public health is being played with, it has not been brought into legal scope. Only last Thursday, the drug administration department team sealed the pharmacy of Amisa Hospital located here while monitoring in Sarmuqam Chainpur and found it operating illegally. After knowing that the team had come for monitoring, the operators of chainpur bazaar were closed and the drug stores were out of contact. After that, before the team that went to monitor the medicine shops of Chabis Pathivera rural municipality reached, all the shops were closed by the operators who got a warning. After hearing that the shop was closed, the monitoring team had to return from the middle. _{From there, the team that went to monitor Kedarsyun, while monitoring the pharmacy of Ritu Polyclinic in Jhota, the operator lost contact . Everything except the pharmacy was open. Patients were recruited. The pharmacy did not open even after requesting it. "If the real person is not here," Assistant Chief District Officer Satyakumari Joshi, who was in the monitoring team, said, "We have called the people's representatives to seal the bond." They didn't come even after waiting for seven hours.'}

'I didn't take any kind of health training, I learned to inject and sell medicine while working.' break Even after waiting all day, the public representative did not come, and the monitoring team returned in the evening, leaving only a notice of non-registered transactions. Ninu Shrestha from the Nepalgunj office of the Drug Administration Department came to the team for monitoring. Shrestha ignored the request from the district administration to return only after monitoring for a few days due to the situation in the whole district. There is a similar situation in other parts of the district. We requested many times to the representatives of the drug administration department that they would go for one or two more days of monitoring, but they did not agree, said Joshi.

Medical drug dealing

Illegally operated drug stores are not only endangering the lives of common people by distributing drugs randomly, they are also doing the work of trapping the youth in the swamp of drugs . On January 8th, the drug administration department registered a case in the district court on charges of selling drugs to Praveen Mandal, a resident of Rudrapur, Uttarakhand, India, an owner of New Chain Medical in the headquarters of Chainpur. He was arrested by the police in October last year based on information that he was selling a banned drug called tramadol as a drug.

The police also arrested Sujan Dhami, the owner of Sujan Hair Cutting, after it was found that the medicine was being sold and distributed through hair cutting salons in Chainpur market. The department has also registered a case in his name.

Praveen, who has been working in Chain Medical for 10 years, has not acquired any educational qualifications related to health . So much so that he himself has admitted that he has not passed the matric.   'I have not received any health training,' he said in a conversation with Kantipur, 'I learned to inject and sell medicine while working.' During the statement given at the public prosecutor's office, it is mentioned in the indictment that he studied pharmacy for three years but did not get a certificate. Headquarters Chainpur and other medicals in the village are also selling drugs, but due to the neglect of the regulatory bodies, the locals say that the youths are getting stuck in the swamp . "Many medical doctors in Chainpur and outside are selling drugs openly," says Birkh Bohra of Mashta, "Drug dealers and drug users are Users are growing while no action is taken.' 

Last year in Kattik, after they were not given the drugs they asked for, some users even beat up the pharmacy staff of Jai Prithvi Hospital located in the headquarters Chainpur .

There are many cases of people dying due to the medicine given by medical . Such incidents happen every year in Bajhang. 52-year-old Ramlal Thapa of Jayaprithvi Municipality-11 died three years ago while being treated at Mandal's medical center, accused of selling drugs. Praveen Mandal administered an injection to Thapa who had walked from home to get treatment for a common cold.

After Thapa fainted, he was taken to the district hospital for further treatment and died there. Immunity was granted to the fake Dr. Mandal saying that it is not possible to say what the cause of death was because the deceased was treated without post-mortem . In the same year, 35-year-old Lakshmi Bohra of Kotdeval, Mashta Rural Municipality, who was suffering from asthma due to injection by Praveen, fell ill. She fainted after injecting Lakshmi. His life was saved after being treated at the district hospital for a long time. A few years ago, a person from Nepalganj and a girl from Suweda village of Jaiprithvi municipality in Bajhang died after taking the medicine given by the same medical doctor. 

In the case of the death of a citizen of Nepalganj, another director of the same medical center, Manitosh Wala, an Indian citizen, was also sentenced to 1 year in prison .

According to the records of the Drug Administration Department, there are only 35 pharmacies in Bajhang district. But health workers say that there are more than 35 drug stores in Jaya Prithvi Highway area only. There is unofficial data that more than 150 drug shops are operating across the district and more than 15 of them are being operated illegally by Indian citizens. Although there are illegal clinics and drug shops throughout the district, no effective initiative has been taken to control them.

As a result of treatment by such clinics, various types of health-related complications have been reported. Another excess done by such doctors is to charge a much higher price than the prescribed price. Relatives of the patients say that the medical facilities operating in the capital also determine the price of medicine based on people. ``They take the price of medicines by looking at their faces,'' says Lakshmi Bohra of Surma Rural Municipality. After seeing what they have read and written, they price accordingly.

Although there are complaints that the price is twenty times higher than the prescribed price in rural areas,  Monitoring is done only occasionally. There is a complaint that most of the clinics prescribe more than the necessary medicine and give more than the prescribed amount . Regarding the question of controlling the games that are being played on the health of the common people, the responsible bodies are avoiding each other saying that they are responsible.

'Many patients who have been fed by the medical staff are coming to the district. We issued a notice on the radio not to do this . We also talked about the need to control the meeting of the district administration, district coordination committee and office heads. But it has not been taken seriously,' says Lal Bahadur Dhami, the head of the health office in Bajhang He said that the situation is dangerous.

People's representatives are also neglecting to regulate the drug shops operating in the municipality, so health workers say that public health is being played with. The people's representatives of some municipalities are directly and indirectly involved in such work. That's why they keep silent,'' said a health worker, 'because the local government ignored it, the problem will only increase.'