Nepal protesters burn medicine truck

Over the past month, more than 50 people have died in the growing violence in region, with the Madhesis, Tharus and Janjatis up in arms against the new constitution.

“The medicine shortage has created dire problems for patients with chronic diseases”, Dr. Anil Kumar Yadav, one of the doctors in the regional hospital in Dadeldhura, told BuzzFeed News.

“Medicines are crucial. We are now trying to airlift emergency supplies”.

The crisis centres on opposition to Nepal’s new constitution, signed on 20 September.

India, which has close cultural ties with the group, has restricted fuel and other exports to Nepal.

Medical professionals say the blockade has led to a shortage of operational goods, including surgical sutures and antibiotics.

Federation of Nepal Drugs Entrepreneurs vice-chairman Prakash Khandewal said: “More than 300 vehicles carrying medicines and medicinal raw materials have been stuck at Raxaul”, adding that temperature changes would damage them. The Red Cross has said it is running out of blood bags.

The Indian government has denied this, but has said it can not allow trucks to enter Nepal while conditions are unsafe. Today’s Nepali youth, which comprises of 70 percent of its population rejects the decades old notion that Nepal is obliged to depend on India for all its imports and exports because of geographical compulsions, and do not accept that as a fundamental thing to live with. “Hospitals have had to reschedule surgeries because they have not been able to get medicines and instruments”. “The level of pain and difficulty is just getting worse”.

Doctors in Nepal say shortages of life-saving medicines because of political protests that have blocked key roads could lead to a crisis as hospitals are starting to cut services.

Protesters throw rocks at police during clashes in the border town of Birgunj.

Indian border officials, claiming that protests against Nepal’s new secular republican constitution are putting drivers’ lives in danger, have for weeks prevented shipments of vital supplies from crossing the border.

The truck, carrying life saving drugs, was set on fire by the agitating Madhesi Morcha cadres on Thursday night.

Relations between Nepal and India have frozen over what continues to be an impasse over the Himalayan nation’s Constitution. According to reports, a few of the government employees are even taking bribes to distribute fuel. Children and women have been shot by Nepali police officers, while on two separate occasions, officers have been hacked to death by angry mobs.

Only hours before his election as new Nepalese prime minister on October 11, K.P. Sharma Oli pledged to steer the country out of a weeks-long political and diplomatic crisis that has brought it toe-to-toe with powerhouse India.

“It [the address] was the usual list of long-term projects, which people are not interested in at this point”, he said.

Kunda Dixit is the publisher of the Nepali Times and the author of several books, including a trilogy on the conflict in Nepal: A People War, Never Again, and People After War.

Prime Minister Oli’s first order of business is to negotiate in good faith with Madhesi leaders in ongoing talks, and assure New Delhi that he is serious about addressing their demands.