BACKGROUND Accessibility and affordability of evidence-based medicines are issues of global concern. For low-income countries like Nepal, it is crucial to have easy and reliable access to affordable, good-quality, evidence-based medicines, especially in the aftermath of natural or manmade disasters. Availability of affordable and evidence-based high quality medicines depends on the medicine pro...

Post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL) is a non-ulcerative lesion of the skin caused by Leishmania donovani, which is usually seen after completion of treatment of the kala-azar. The condition is yet to be reported from Nepal. We document and report for the first time a case of PKDL in Nepal.

We report the isolation of dengue virus type 2 from a dengue patient returning to Japan from Nepal in October, 2004. This is the first isolate of dengue virus in Nepal. According to nucleotide homology, the virus was closest to a dengue virus type 2 isolate from India.

We report a case of Rickettsia honei infection in a human in Nepal. The patient had severe illness and many clinical features typical of Flinders Island spotted fever. Diagnosis was confirmed by indirect immunofluorescent assay with serum and molecular biological techniques. Flinders Island spotted fever may be an endemic rickettsiosis in Nepal.

In the last decades, prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has escalated in Nepal. This study reviews existing evidence on the burden of non-communicable diseases in Nepal using the framework developed by Arksey and O'Malley for scoping reviews. A total of 110 articles were identified from database searches, and four from additional searches. The titles and abstracts were reviewed usin...

BACKGROUND People from different cultures who speak different languages may experience pain differently. This possible variability has important implications for evaluating the validity of pain quality measures that are directly translated into different languages without cultural adaptations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of language and culture on the validity of pain quali...

BACKGROUND The presence of the recently introduced primary dengue virus vector mosquito Aedes aegypti in Nepal, in association with the likely indigenous secondary vector Aedes albopictus, raises public health concerns. Chikungunya fever cases have also been reported in Nepal, and the virus causing this disease is also transmitted by these mosquito species. Here we report the results of a study...

BACKGROUND Women in Nepal have low status, especially younger women in co-resident households. Nepal also faces high levels of household food insecurity and malnutrition, and stagnation in uptake of modern family planning methods. OBJECTIVE This study aims to understand if household structure and food insecurity interact to influence family planning use in Nepal. METHODS Using data on marri...

Nepal houses only inland freshwater wetlands, ranging from floodplains of snow-melt-fed cold Himalayan rivers, warm rivers originating in the mid hills, high altitudinal glacial lakes to hot springs, ponds, ox-bow lakes, marshes and swamps. These wetlands support several endemic and globally threatened species of flora and fauna. Besides, wetland sites have significant recreational, religio-cul...

I n terms of biological diversity, the Himalayan region is one of the world’s richest ecosystems (Pei and Sharma 1998) and has been identified as a “biodiversity hotspot.” Although Nepal constitutes only about 0.09% of the world’s land area, it harbors a remarkable number of faunal species: 4.5% of all mammals, 9.5% of birds, 1.2% of amphibians, 2.03% of reptiles and 6.8% of butterflies and mot...