Better Healthcare awareness require to budding Nepalese and Bhutanese Immigrant in USA

Life is full of mystery and even our life expectancy too. We never predict how long we can survive in this world. We are just living our life without knowing what´s happening in another minute. I am specially concern with those who are living here in this land of opportunity without having any opportunity to get medical access. Be more specific in this down economy Better Healthcare awareness require to budding Nepalese and Bhutanese community in USA.

From the time when we landed in this country our days are passing like an automobile in a freeway. No one is concerned about their health and quality of life. Everyone is just running to catch their buses, trains, office, their daily works. There is no halt anymore in life. Why?

There is no any convincing answer to these questions. Particularly I am not, why I am running so fast without taking care of my health and happiness? I still remember I used to read and even after becoming a teacher I used to teach "health is wealth". But I see everyone is running behind the wealth without taking care of their health. I am not blaming to anyone, because in this down economy we must be more serious and cautious to protect our jobs than our health.

I have interrogated about this problem to many of our community friends and few Americans too, they all say, "we are running to save our pay check or we will be in the street". One pay check miss means a lot here in this country. Especially those who depend completely on limited earnings. Missing one job doesn´t save us from paying rent or mortgage to utilities and groceries. If we left behind just few months with the same situation life becomes more insecure and …….

I have asked many friends, students and community members if they have health care plan. But they say, "No". And also found many folks don´t know how to get it and where to seek these things. I am not talking about those folks who are working in corporate world and giant companies but those who are working in less skill and low pay jobs. Most of them do not have health coverage and what ever happens to them they rely on the medicine available in the pharmacy without prescription and most of them depend on pain killer than any other medicine.

Life is not only fast here in this country but the food is also fast, I mean most of them depend on fast food right at the corner of their ways to work, school or way back home with lots of refilled Sodas.

We have so many organizations formed by our community members but very few or even none of them are really concerned about the problem.

Recently, I have seen Sahayeta.org is trying to reach our community members with health camp but find really difficult to raise fund to support. According to Ashish Hada, until now they have conducted health care events in San Francisco, San Leandro, blood drive program in Association of Nepalis in America´s 27th Convention during july 4th weekend and recently organized a fundraising program to support medical assistance to Nepal. Similarly Motherland Nepal is also active in raising fund to provide medical aids to Nepalese community here in US and in Nepal, they often collect funds and send it direct to needy person to get better health care or critical medical operations . But still more health care awareness require to growing Nepali and Bhutanese community in USA. There are so many Nepalese organizations but very few are concern about this kind of issues.

Once, he asked me to circulate the news seeking help if any Nepalese organizations of Northern California want to support or raise the fund so that they can provide more health care services to needy community members and I posted it in hamrosamaj.net and emailed to all so that the program could be more successful, but so far we never get any positive response from our community and organizations. We know we have formed our organizations to support our community members. But we are not helping them when they seek help. What is the use to help when it is too late?

Many times we have raised fund when we are asked to support any of our community members when they are shot dead in a store, got in a car accident on the way and even raised fund to support many complications to our friends, relatives and even unknown person living back in Nepal. We have showed our generosity to do so but have we ever thought about our own community members who are suffering a lot without proper guidance and care? We know there are so many new comers here in our society who does not know how to get those facilities here.

Therefore, the time has come to change our way of thinking. We must focus our sources and efforts to support our folks living here with lots of problems. Sadly, we have lost some of our friends and community members here.

So, precaution is better than cure. We have to be prepared and we must manage our time to look after our own health. It is good practice to have an annual checkup and regular follow ups as needed, in order to maintain good health. But due to lack of Insurance and appropriate paper works; many immigrants do not receive adequate primary health care. This can sometimes lead to a more fatal and dangerous situation as there maybe some complications developing in our body that could have been easily averted with early detection and prevention.

According to recent survey conducted among our community members we have found that "Our community members work more than 14-15 hours or even some drive taxis, work in the gas stations or store more than the hours stated before. And have never seen a doctor for last two three years. They do not know if they are medically fit or any fatal problem is developing in their body. According to Nisha Thapa, a health worker and Member of Sahayeta.org, says, "Rate of diabetes and heart diseases is getting rampant in Nepali community and our goal is to prevent this before it develops to strokes, heart attacks, and diabetes." We have to be more concerned toward decreasing our risk factors by regular check up and early detection of our Blood Pressure, Cholesterol level, Diabetes, Osteoporosis, Asthma, hypertension, anemia, cancer, HIV and many more.

As we all know we are working very hard but our heart works harder than we do. Consequently, we need to take care of our heart. We have lots of stress and pressure in our daily lives and at the same time we never take care what we eat and how long we rest and relax in good way. We know heart attack is one of the commons in US. It strikes almost a million People in the US each year. So we must know the cause and prevention of it before it is too late.

So here my concern is to change our life style. Give up smoking, alcohol abuse, do lots of physical activities, eat the right foods and maintain our weight.

It is really very important to follow a heart healthy diet and add lots of fruits and vegetables in our daily life. We know eating right can help us maintain good health and decrease our risk factor. But we should not forget to have regular check up and follow up what Physician and health practitioner ask us to do.

Let´s learn more about our health and wellness and make it a part of our routine before it is too late. Let´s get the possible vaccine because it may help us to keep safe and it´s better to prevent an illness than to treat it. According to GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world´s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, "vaccine can help us make healthier future. If we get all we may even prevent some of our health problems".

At last abide me if I am mistaken because I am not a health professional but love to live healthy and want to see everybody well and fit. I would like to request our community members who are in this profession to come forward and educate and provide basic knowledge of our health care problems so that we can feel better and live longer. We can´t ignore the fact that we are living our life with lots of stress and tension and there is high risk of getting stroke or become a victim of Silent Killer, by raising our bar of blood pressure. Let´s take care of our physical condition and prevent serious problems later. It may take some time to get used to follow new routine but that gives us good and better health.