‘If we leave, Nepal will suffer’: embattled hospitals fear impact of UK job offers

The emergency department at Bir hospital in Kathmandu is so busy that staff say patients sometimes have to share beds. Photograph: Pete Pattisson

The emergency department at Kathmandu’s Bir hospital is already packed with patients, but still they come, in wheelchairs and on stretchers, filling every space. A man is lifted off a bed, still attached to three tubes, to make room for a new arrival. Another is handed an oxygen mask from a fellow patient. Security guards man the sliding metal entrance gates to try to control the flow.

Nurse Shalu Chand, right, at work in the emergency department at Bir hospital in Kathmandu. Photograph: Pete Pattisson