Nepal’s health worker shortage is driving doctor-patient conflict

Decades of government failure to expand the health workforce have left doctors overworked, patients underserved, and assaults on health workers on the rise.

On Wednesday, a doctor serving at a primary health care centre in Dolpa district called Dr Bishwa Raj Dawadi, general secretary of the Nepal Medical Association, with a dilemma. As the association urged doctors to boycott services after a colleague was assaulted in Birgunj, he wanted to know whether he too should join the protest.