Coffee Production in Kavre and Lalitpur Districts, Nepal

Coffee (Coffea spp) is an important and emerging cash crop having potential to provide farmers employment and income generation opportunities. This crop is well adapted to the climatic conditions of mid-hills of Nepal. Thus, majority of the farmers are attracted towards cultivation of coffee because of demands in national and International market. Coffee is now becoming integral part of farming system in rural areas. However, information on performance of coffee and farmers response has not been well documented. Therefore, we undertook the present work to analyze demography, ethnicity, household occupation, literacy status, average land holding, coffee cultivation area, livelihood and sources of income of coffee growers, production and productivity, pricing, cropping pattern of the coffee and problesm faced by them in mid hill district of Kavrepalanchowk (hereafter ‘Kavre') and Lalitpur Districts. All the samples were taken randomly and selected from coffee producing cooperative of Kavre and Lalitpur. Our analysis showed that the male farmer dominant over female on adopting coffee cultivation in both districts with higher value in Kavre. Brahmin and Chetri ethnic communities were in majority over others in adopting the coffee cultivation. Literate farmers were more dominant over illiterates on adopting the coffee cultivation, The mean land holding was less, ranging from 0.15 to 2.30 ha for coffee cultivation, the history of coffee cultivation in Kavre showed that highest number of farmers were engaged in coffee farming from last 16 years. The mean yield of fresh cherry was 1027.20 kg/ha in Kavre, while it was 1849.36 kg/ha in Lalitpur. The study revealed that majority of the coffee plantations were between 6-10 years old. The major problems facing by coffee farmers were diseases spread, lack of irrigation facility and drying of plants. Despite of that the coffee farming was one of the rapidly emerging occupations among the farmers in both district of Nepal

Priority public health interventions and research agendas in post-earthquake Nepal

The occurrence of natural disasters including earthquake is becoming more frequent phenomena worldwide. All these disasters trigger huge damages to infrastructure, economies as well as population health. Nepal’s earthquake in 2015 has multiple effects on population health and health services delivery. Many public health facilities, mostly health posts or sub-healthposts, were damaged or completely destroyed. Priority health services such as immunization and antenatal care were also seriously affected. The earthquake has prompted the need for a disaster-related population-health-research agenda as well as renewed disaster strategy in post-earthquake Nepal. Meanwhile, it also unveiled the gap in knowledge and practice regarding earthquake resilience in Nepal. There is an opportunity for school-based and community-based interventions in both disaster preparedness and resilience. Nepal can build on experiences from other countries as well as from its own. We have discussed possible impacts of the Nepal earth- quake on population health and health system infrastructures. We have also suggested possible public health interventions bestowing active awareness among the population and a research agenda in this regard. We strongly urge for the translation of the National Health Policy (2014) into action, as it prioritizes the need of an earthquake resistant infrastructure as well as the implementation of a disaster response pla

Experts warn Nepal Government not to reduce local Public Health spending

The health system in Nepal is currently undergoing some very interesting radical reforms. The new Constitution in 2015 brought a complete restructuring of the country’s political system, creating a Federal Republic with seven Provinces. This change involves a significant devolution of power and resources from central to local level in many sectors including the health sector. This editorial warns of the risk of moving away the political focus from Public Health in a centralised political syste

Stipulating citizen's fundamental right to healthcare: Inference from the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nepal 2015

Nepal has a great opportunity to learn from, and collaborate with, non-governmental development partners and private sectors, and from other governments and organizations around the world, but we must move promptly

The presentation of academic self in the digital age: the role of electronic databases

A growing number of online electronic resources present academic work. We are not focusing here on specialised electronic databases that store bibliographic research data, such as Medline, PubMed, ASSIA, ERIC, JSTOR, but databases or social networking websites /platforms for academics/researchers that profile research, academic and professional activities, such as SCOPUS, WoS (Web of Science), Academia.edu, KUDOS, ORCiD, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, GoogleScholar and Mendeley. We discuss databases or platforms can promote the profile of an individual academic, highligthing their research interests, grants and publications. These databases are good outlets for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) to build, improve and promote their public profile. However, the level of efforts requires to open an account or to maintain these databases regularly can be a daunting task for some scholars. This paper outlines some of these key databases and their functions and reflects on advantages and disadvantages of engaging with the most popular ones. We remind the reader that many of these databases require academics’ attention and input, and thus create more work

Impact of adoption of heat-stress tolerant maize hybrid on yield and profitability: Evidence from Terai region of Nepal

Abiotic stresses (drought, heat) are one of the major impediments to enhancing the maize productivity of marginal farmers in the facet of climate change. The present study attempts to investigate the impact of heat-tolerant maize hybrid on yield and income in the Terai region of Nepal. This study uses cross-sectional farm household-level data collected in August 2021 from a randomly selected sample of 404 rural households. We used a doubly robust inverse probability weighted regression adjustment method to obtain reliable impact estimates. Adoption of heat-tolerant hybrid increases yields by 16% and income by 44% in the spring season (a stress condition). Overall, yield increases by 12%, net income by 31%, saving of 40% in seed costs, and per capita food expenditure increases by 8.50%. Hence a conducive environment must be created for scaling up heat-tolerant maize varieties to increase productivity, minimize risk, and transform of the maize sector

Patient and Public Engagement in Health Research: Learning from UK Ideas

One of the new ideas in health and social care research in the UK is around involving patients and the general public in all aspects of research. This paper led by seven MSc students from Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences in Nepal. They attended Bournemouth University modules as part of the Erasmus+ exchange programme in 2022 and worked with two UK-based academics. The authors outline the thinking behind this process, and offer an example. They address its importance in improving the quality of the research as well as adding value to its societal relevanc

Need and scope of global partnership on public health research

BACKGROUND:A large and growing body of "big data" is generated by internet search engines, such as Google. Because people often search for information about public health and medical issues, researchers may be able to use search engine data to monitor and predict public health problems, such as HIV. We sought to assess the feasibility of using Google search data to analyze and predict new HIV diagnoses cases in the United States. METHODS AND FINDINGS:From 2007 to 2014, we collected search volume data on HIV-related Google search keywords across the United States. State-level new HIV diagnoses data were collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and AIDSVu.org. We developed a negative binomial model to predict HIV cases using a subset of significant predictor keywords identified by LASSO. The Google search data were combined with state-level HIV case reports provided by the CDC. We use historical data to train the model and predict new HIV diagnoses from 2011 to 2014, with an average R2 value of 0.99 between predicted versus actual cases, and average root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 108.75. CONCLUSIONS:Results indicate that Google Trends is a feasible tool to predict new cases of HIV at the state level. We discuss the implications of integrating visualization maps and tools based on these models into public health and HIV monitoring and surveillance

Inequality of access in irrigation systems of the mid-hills of Nepal

Access to, and control over, water for irrigation is one of the most important factors for increasing agricultural productivity, thereby affecting household food security and levels of poverty in developing countries. However, investments in the irrigation sector have often failed to consider equity aspects of irrigation interventions. Using data from 199 households from three irrigation systems in the mid-hills of Nepal, we analyse access and control of water in different levels of socio-economic heterogeneities. The results demonstrate that efforts to improve livelihoods of the rural poor should give due consideration to the distributional aspects of irrigation interventions, with authority for allocating the level of access to irrigation water given to the farmers throughout the system