Kathmandu, April 28: Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ has said that there is a long history of friendly and cooperative relations between Nepal and China.
Addressing the building handover ceremony of the Civil Hospital, which was completed with the assistance of the Chinese government, Prime Minister Dahal expressed his belief that the expanded and upgraded infrastructure and facilities will enable the hospital to provide easy services to patients who are looking for better treatment and services.
PM Dahal’s speech (Full text)
I thank the Civil Service Hospital, the Chinese Embassy and the Guangzhou Engineering Construction Company for organizing this handover ceremony today.
I am happy that the upgradation and reconstruction project of this hospital has been completed.
I am hopeful that, with expanded and upgraded infrastructures and facilities, the hospital will be able to cater services to patients who are in need of better treatment and services.
I would like to thank the Government of the People’s Republic of China for supporting this hospital and this particular project of upgradation and reconstruction.
Nepal and China cherish a long history of friendly, cordial, and cooperative relations. The history of economic, cultural, and people-to-people exchanges between Nepal and China dates back to time immemorial.
Friendship, mutual respect, understanding and appreciation of each other’s legitimate interests, concerns and sensitivities underpin our good neighborly relations.
We are happy that these relations have been growing and expanding in the interests of our two governments and peoples.
Continued support of China to Nepal’s development endeavors has been the hallmark of our friendly and good neighbourly relations. Indeed, this support has been quite helpful and essential to creating development infrastructures, enhancing connectivity, providing our people with health facilities, developing our human resources, and supporting people’s livelihoods among others.
I believe that this hospital also stands as a symbol of deep and close Nepal-China economic cooperation that our two countries have been enjoying for decades.
In fact, China’s support to create and expand our health infrastructures, develop our human resources in this particular field, as well as to better equip our hospitals with equipment and medical supplies is well appreciated.
In addition to this hospital, China has also supported us in builing the Cancer Hospital in Bharatpur. We have consistently been receiving support from the Chinese Government for its upgradation and expansion of its services too.
Talking about Nepal-China cooperation in the health sector, I have seen many doctors and other health practitioners graduated from different universities in China. Even in this hospital, there are many doctors, who had the opportunity to study in China. They are doing excellent jobs in Nepal and in this hospital too.
Similarly, we remain grateful to China’s generous support of life-saving vaccines, critical medical equipment, and other essential medical supplies in the wake of Covid Pandemic. We will always remember this generosity and genuine solidarity from a close neighbour and friend- China. Thanks to the support of China and other development partners, we have been able to overcome the difficulties of the pandemic and, most of all, the post-pandemic recovery has remained our sole priority now.
As a close neighbour, good friend, and trusted partner, Nepal wishes to build a deeper level of economic engagement and partnership with China. Indeed, with the huge strides China has made- and continues to make- in socio-economic development including in medical science and technology, it is our hope and aspiration to work together with China to deliver development outcomes and attain prosperity for our people.
Particularly in the health sector, Nepal wishes to have more co-operation with China to ensure access of people to better health services, improve our health facilities, expand health infrastructures, equip our hospitals with modern and state-of-art facilities, impart required knowledge and skills to our doctors and health workers, and transfer technology that our hospitals and health facilities are in need of. This will certainly help provide our people with modern and sophisticated health services.
In this context, we highly admire President Xi Jinping’s vision of ‘Building a Global Community of Health for All’. Under this vision, we are looking forward to promoting cooperation and collaboration with China. Apart from other subjects, it is our intention to develop this hospital as a super-speciality hospital with modern treatment facilities. We are also thinking of developing this as one of the academic institutes for post-graduate study with more infrastructure and facilities.
Much to our happiness, China has agreed to provide our hospitals with state-of-art technologies in different fields. China’s commitment to support this hospital by providing CAR-T-Shell technology to treat blood cancer is certainly a step forward to this end.
As I see much potential for this hospital as well as other hospitals too to develop them as the center of excellence to provide world-class medical treatment with the support of our friendly countries like China, I urge you all to think over how best Nepal and China can cooperate in different areas including technology transfer in the health sector.
Lastly, once again, I take this opportunity to extend our sincere appreciation and thanks to the Government of the People’s Republic of China for supporting the upgradation of this hospital. As I indicated, more can and should be done in the future.
Keynote Speech by Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ at the ceremony of the completion of upgradation and reconstruction of China-aided Civil Service Hospital
(Kathmandu, 28 April 2023)
