KATHMANDU: The Government of Nepal has received encouraging support, both in cash and in kind from several international government and agencies for the prevention and control of COVID-19 as well as to treat the infected ones.
The government of India, China, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, World Health Organization (WHO) among others have provided financial support and medical appliances to aid the government of Nepal in its fight against the deadly infection.
Medical appliances include tools to conduct COVID-19 test, safety equipment and gears such as facial masks, gloves and personal protection equipment among others, according to specialist at the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), Dr Roshan Pokharel.
Pokharel shared that among the pledged financial assistance, the MoHP has already received the amount through Ministry of Finance (MoF) while some assistance was yet to be received. The government of Japan has donated oxygen machine, ultrasound machine and six ambulances.
Likewise, the Swiss government provided 60,000 sets of PCR kits and 30,000 PCR kits by the Indian government. The government has given 20,000 Remdesivir, an anti-viral drug that further prevents replication of the virus to the government of Nepal besides donating 30 ambulances.
Similarly, the government of German has been providing technical assistance for the sanitation and wastage management of 13 COVID-19 treatment facilities.
The German government pledged Rs 1 billion was due to be received by the MoHP while the MoF has already approved it, informed Pokharel.
The government of China has pledged Rs 240 million to Nepal while in-kind support has been trickling in. The in-kind support includes PPE and PCR test kits.
The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are to provide Rs 200 each as a loan and grant of which the latter should be spent within the December this year.
The WHO has been providing technical support for works such as contact tracing, set up of the lab and equipping COVID-19 special hospitals with technology. The WHO has donated seven ventilators and some PCR reagent.
The government of Nepal had already made public the expenditure amounting to over Rs 8 billion that was spent by the federal government for the prevention, control of the COVID-19 and to treat the infected ones.
The COVID-19 Prevention, Control and Treatment Fund set up by the government to garner support from the private sector and individuals interested to contribute to this cause has Rs 2.73 billion in its Fund, according to the Information Officer of the Office of Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, Kabita Phuyal.
COVID-19 was first reported on January 23 on a Nepali youth returning the epicenter of COVID-19, Wuhan of China and confirmed of contracting the flu-like infection the following day. Since then, the cases of COVID-19 continues to spread across the country.
Till date, the number of COVID-19 cases in the country stand at 83,823 while 64069 infected ones have been recovered. A total of 535 people have lost their lives to the deadly infection in the country so far.
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