An Incredible Journey: Dr. Prasana’s Farewell
After two full years with Oda Foundation, Dr. Prasana has returned to Kathmandu, continuing her career in global health. Oda Foundation is grateful to her leadership and support. Read her reflection, below.
Dr. Prasana Khatiwoda, pictured here with with our Chief of Staff and Clinic Manager.
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
As a global health professional and clinician, this quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has always stuck with me. These were also the words I had in my mind when I travelled from Kathmandu that day in 2019 to start a new chapter in my life at The Oda Foundation in one of the most rural areas of Nepal: Kalikot.
Kalikot is a place not lot of people have heard about. A place devastated by Nepal’s decade-long civil war, and yet, somehow unnoticed – “by the government and by nature” — where injustice in health care engulfs the community.
Dr. Khatiwoda, checking with government partners during rural Kalikot’s first COVID-19 wave in March of 2020.
When I first came to Oda, I was still trying to figure out who I was, with my purpose in life and my destiny. On these hills, I found my inspiration in witnessing the power of faith and silent grace of people working in the face of inequality, poverty, struggle and loss.
For 2 years, inside the compound of this beautiful organization, my colleagues – my friends and family here – and my patients is what has kept me honest, inspired and have kept me going on. My experience here has made me a better human, a good clinician, and a responsible citizen of this country.
Oda Foundation’s clinic team
Kalikot and especially Oda will now always have a spot in my heart as a place where I learned and had a chance to witness how change in this country is possible when ordinary people, like me and the whole Oda team, get engaged to demand change and work hard for it.
Of course, change and progress are always uneven and slow. It’s the same story everywhere and the story for Oda, for this community, has been defined by forward motion: Oda Foundation’s success in drawing educated, qualified, and passionate Nepalis here to rural Nepal, is exemplary. If our founder/director had told you 7 years back that this place was going to have health facilities, education for children, a hospital and insurance for people - just 7 years back! - you might have said his sights are settled up too high.
But that is what Oda Foundation did - that’s what we did, each and every one of us, the Oda family - and I am happy to be a part of that, of this all-encompassing hope and dream.
Dr. Prasana initiated daily continuing education seminars with the Oda Foundation clinic team.
A place like Oda Foundation has given work and purpose to people like us. People with the idea beating in our hearts that progress is possible in this community, in Nepal, within our lifetime. So that’s what I mean when I say Oda Foundation is exceptional – it has helped people like me realize the capacity within me to bring change and make a difference. A realization that I will be carrying my entire life as I chase my individual dreams, and dreams I have for my country as I strive to achieve a common good — a greater good! — for everyone in the world.
— Dr. Prasana Khatiwoda
Thank you, Dr. Prasana, for coming to Kalikot and spreading your light here!