Meet Dr. Ram. As hard-working a physician as you’ll ever find. For over 20 years, you could find him at the Ambote health post high in the mountains of Nepal. And while every medical professional is trained to treat a wide range of ailments, Dr. Ram’s time was largely spent on one: severe — even life-threatening — diarrhea from drinking contaminated water. Many days, that was all he saw.
To add insult to injury, Dr. Ram was forced to drink the same dirty water that was making so many of his patients sick. He knew better. He’s a doctor, after all. But he also knew this: when your only choice is between unhealthy water and no water at all, you drink whatever you’ve got. So he did. And his patients did. And then he did his best to treat the illness that inevitably resulted.
Until everything changed.
In 2016, clean water began to flow in Ambote for the first time. Suddenly, the patients he typically treated for waterborne illness were nowhere to be found. They were probably in school, or at work, or playing soccer. He didn’t know for sure. All he knew was that they weren’t in the clinic anymore.
In fact, the last time our team visited Ambote’s health post, all they found was a sprained ankle and a mild fever. A near-empty clinic, and not a case of diarrhea to speak of. How great is that?