BPKIHS also known as (B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences), is a Nepalese autonomous health sciences university. It is located in the sub-metropolitan city of Dharan in Sunsari District. The Institute is a Nepal-India cooperation.
The Institute was established on January 18, 1993. The Institute was named after the late former Prime Minister of Nepal Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala. The Institute took over the management of the 150-bed Eastern Regional Hospital, a Public Hospital, in 1993.
This Institute is envisaged as one of the successful examples of Nepal-India co-operation. The Health Ministers of the two countries signed the Indo-Nepal agreement for establishment of BPKIHS on the Hindu auspicious day of Mahashivaratri (Mar 10, 1994).
The hospital was built with assistance from the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China in the year 1998 and has been in service since then. Being in Chitwan has strategically placed the hospital in a central location in Nepal for easy access for cancer patients from all over the county.
The Institute, located in Eastern Nepal, has extended its continued health services through teaching district concept to Primary Health Care Centers, District Hospitals and Zonal Hospitals in different districts of the region. This University is aptly named after Bisheshwar Prasad Koirala, Nepal’s visionary leader in social uplifting, firm believer of national integration.
Postgraduate programs (MD, MS, and MSc) were started in 1999. All the MD, MS, MDS, MSc and MPH degrees awarded by BPKIHS are recognized by Nepal Medical Council and respective councils of Nepal. The MD/MS degrees (anesthesiology, clinical pharmacology & therapeutics, dermatovenerology, ENT, internal medicine, orthopedics, pediatrics, psychiatry, radiodiagnosis, and surgery) are recognized by Medical Council of India (MCI). Similarly, there is continued effort for getting MCI recognition of other disciplines as well. While selecting candidates for MD/MS/MDS postgraduate studies, the institute has given due recognition to the medical graduates who have served in the primary health centers and /or district hospitals.
The main mission of BPKIHS is to improve the health status of the people of Nepal by providing holistic health care through training of compassionate, caring, communicative and socially accountable health workforce acting as agents of change and through advancement in research and innovation in service as well as education to ensure healthy individuals and families by collaborating with all stakeholders.
In terms of achieving the educational goals of the Institute both the present curricula and future educational programmes are to be need-based, integrated, community-oriented and partially problem solving in line with innovative medical education programmes epitomized in the Edinburgh Declaration of 1988. These are the basic tenets on which BPKIHS curricula are based.
In the area of service delivery, this Institute is committed to provide services not only to those coming to its teaching hospital but also to those who are not able to do so. This, the Institute does by reaching out to the community, which cannot reach the Institute.
The mountain must go to Mohammed if Mohammed doesn’t go to the mountain. Outreach services are an integral part of the commitment, which the Institute has pledged to the legislators. It is not only reaching out to sick in the community but active promotion of positive health and through it, improvement in the status of the community health that will serve as a measure of attainment of our service goals.
The faculty at BPKIHS is expected to monitor health indicators such as Infant Mortality Rate, Crude Birth Rate, Crude Death Rate, Blindness, Deafness and Disability rates etc. on an ongoing basis much in the same way as we monitor our individual patients in terms of established clinical parameters. Just as we intervene with different modalities of treatment when our individual patient are not making satisfactory progress. Such monitoring of community health indicators by the departments constitutes an important element in the overall process of evaluation of the Institute by internal an external evaluations.
This University aims at becoming center of excellence in patient care, teaching, and health sector research. It is following an integrated and holistic model in academics and services. The institute is committed to its social responsibility and accountability. The institute has provisions for admission to different underprivileged groups/sections of the society in different academic programs.