The Foreign Service Journal, December 2004

American embassy or consulate, nor a predecessor from whom to seek advice. My team and our families were a handful of people in a country without telephones or paved roads, without a place to live, and with limited knowledge of the language and culture. As leader of the public health team, my assignment was to assess health problems and to implement pro- grams to solve them. The challenge was to do this among a people whose exposure to the rest of the world for the last century was nonexistent. Supported by the resource- fulness of our team and the help of a cadre of pensioned, British-trained Gurkhas, we established a relationship of trust with the Nepalese that allowed us to bring modern medicine into their lives and to introduce treatments for diseases such as malaria, typhus and smallpox. Our experience in Nepal exemplifies the value of medical diplomacy as a bridge between people from wildly disparate cultures. An Unexpected Request A career in medical diplomacy was not in my mind when I graduated from Temple University Medical School in 1948 and began my residency in dermatology. During the Korean War I became a commissioned offi- cer in the United States Public Health Service. Then, a year into my first assignment, I received a call from USPHS headquarters asking me to head up a special mis- sion to Nepal. Within days, I found myself in the hands of the Department of State and the Public Health Service in Washington. There, a new desk had been set up for Nepalese affairs but, unfortunately, the young man in charge knew little about the country. Ironically, a little book titled In Search of the Spiny Babbler: An Adventure in Nepal , just published in 1952, turned out to be my best source of background informa- tion. In it, ornithologist Dillon Ripley recounts his travels in Nepal searching for a rare bird, relating Nepal’s history in the process. I learned that, after Jang Bahadur Rana deposed the king in the Kot Massacre of 1846, Nepal became a closed country under the tyrannical, hereditary rule of the Rana maharajas. There were no roads into the kingdom, only a few trails heavily guarded by soldiers. The Ranas forbade newspapers, radios, schools and pub- lic gatherings. They lived lavishly while the population remained impoverished and ignorant. Finally, in 1950, the maharaja was deposed and King Tribhuvan, a descen- dant of the murdered royal family, was restored as the ruler of Nepal. Tribhuvan led Nepal to democracy and recognition as a sovereign nation by the U.N. My research into the medical problems I would find in Nepal suggested that all three types of malaria as well as typhus, smallpox and parasitic infestations were preva- lent. Accordingly, I drew up hurried lists of the needed specialists and itemized the supplies required to build a medical laboratory. The lists were approved, and my wife Connie, a registered nurse, our 4-year-old daughter and I arrived in Kathmandu in mid-October 1952, joining the agricultural technicians, including entomologist Dr. George Brooks, who had arrived a few days earlier. We found ourselves in makeshift quarters that lacked elec- tricity and running water. We were without diplomatic support; but at the same time, unfettered by protocol, we could interact informally with King Tribhuvan. When I requested a liaison, the king responded by appointing a minister of health on the spot. The new minister was one of only nine physicians in Kathmandu. In the past, these men had served only the royal and mil- itary families, leaving nine million Nepalese to live and die without modern medical care. Medical data, nurses and health care workers were nonexistent. A tour of the community hospital, built some 20 years earlier by a maharajah, revealed vacant rooms littered with trash and occupied by pigeons. The situation seemed hopeless, but I resolved to persevere as I waited for staff and supplies to arrive from the States. Soon, a shortwave radio message from Washington informed me that our mission was in danger and, due to a sudden change in the political situation, the promised personnel and supplies would not arrive. There had been no disturbances in our area, however, and our Nepalese friends also gave us no cause for alarm. I decided to ignore the message, and traveled to Calcutta, where I managed to assemble some laboratory equipment and F O C U S 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 4 Dr. George Moore served in Nepal from 1952 to 1954 as a commissioned officer of the U.S. Public Health Service. Since retirement in 1971, he has taught courses in the epidemiology of chronic diseases, and conducted research studies and developed programs in internation- al and community health at the University of Virginia Medical School and the Medical College of Virginia. His daughter Berwyn, born in India in 1953, is a writer of nonfiction and poetry, and an associate professor of English at Gannon University in Erie, Pa.