Musa Masala Says Thank You and Goodbye for Now to Dr. Gyaltsen Gurung
If we can point to the source of the successful operations of the Wongchhu Sherpa Memorial Hospital, we’ll point straight at Dr. Gyaltsen Gurung, Medical Director and Physician in Charge. When Dr. Gurung came to the hospital, it was less than half a year old. Imagine walking into a remote hospital and being completely responsible for the staff and patients while creating a viable medical center to serve the community! The list of accomplishments, creative ideas, and community outreach that Dr. Gurung created is long, including home visits, patient outreach, school visitations, lessons on oral and menstrual hygiene and senior care. To the hospital he brought organization, ultrasound and X-ray technology, a modern lab, telemedicine and a wonderful fellowship program with the University of Nevada, in tandem with Dr. Tony Islas, to bring new doctors from the U.S. to observe at the hospital.
Musa Masala has conducted four dental camps at the hospital and Dr. Gurung has done all he can to assist and make the camps successful.
He has announced he is moving on to continue his medical and spiritual education. And while we are so in awe of his passion to learn, travel and grow, we are torn that he’s leaving the place he had such a huge part in turning into an efficient healthcare center for everyone. Below, he writes about his experience. Here, you can find his previous Musa Masala article about his Buddhism in relation to being a physician.
Dr G, we are gonna miss you and your mandolin, but we know we will stay friends. We hope you will return to us here at the Wongchhu Sherpa Memorial Hospital. We wish you the best in the future. Jam Jam!!
A Journey of Service and Gratitude My Personal Reflections on Wongchhu Sherpa Memorial Hospital by Dr. Gyaltsen Gurung
(Article originally appeared on the hospital website here.)
It is with profound reverence that I pay homage to the late Mr. Wongchu Sherpa, a visionary whose boundless compassion continues to illuminate the remotest corners of our nation. To have served in an institution that bears his name and perpetuates his legacy has been the singular privilege of my professional life.
I am Dr. Gyaltsen Gurung, born in the sequestered fastness of Dolpo where neither school nor clinic nor motorable road existed within weeks of walking distance. In 2001 the journey from my village to Kathmandu required twenty days on foot—an experience that etched indelibly upon my consciousness the fragility of life in high-altitude isolation. Destined originally for monastic ordination, a confluence of beneficence and circumstance redirected me towards modern medicine. Through the generosity of strangers across continents I was able to study medicine in Pokhara and ultimately realise a vocation that had crystallised in childhood: to return to the margins of our country and place whatever skill I possessed at the service of those who have no other recourse.
When I first arrived at Wongchhu Sherpa Memorial Hospital in Tapting, the institution was scarcely five months old. I had envisaged an established facility; instead I discovered an embryonic enterprise in which every protocol, record, roster, and garden bed remained to be created. Serving concurrently as Medical Officer and In-Charge, I found myself engaged in an act of simultaneous healing and institution-building. Together with a small but extraordinarily devoted team—none more steadfast than Mr. Ashal Tamang—we forged systems of clinical governance, financial transparency, and environmental stewardship while never allowing the exigency of patient care to falter.
Guided by the Buddha’s teaching that loving-kindness and compassion are the highest forms of healing, I sought to practise a medicine of presence as much as one of prescription. My clinical decisions were never separate from the deeper conviction that true healing requires the heart as much as the mind.
I hold an unshakable belief that every health professional is called to embody karuṇā—active compassion—in every encounter. I strove to live this precept daily: greeting each patient with unhurried attention, listening not only to symptoms but to the unspoken fears that accompany them, and offering reassurance with the same gentleness I would extend to my own family. Over the years I came to see that compassion is not merely an ethical ornament; it is a powerful therapeutic force. It generates trust, lowers the walls of apprehension, and creates the sacred space in which genuine healing can occur. I believe it was this quiet, consistent practice that allowed the people of Tapting to place their full confidence in me.
Those who had traversed precipitous trails for three to four hours, often in pain or anxiety, deserved far more than a hurried consultation. I maintained personal notebooks on complex or unusual cases, studied late into the night when knowledge was lacking, and, days later, would telephone patients with newly refined treatment plans or simply to ask, “How are you
feeling today?” Such gestures, though small, became threads in a tapestry of trust. I also insisted that the hospital itself should minister to the spirit. We transformed barren ground into a serene, verdant sanctuary—planting trees, tending flower beds, creating quiet corners where sunlight and birdsong could reach those who were suffering. For I have always known that while medicines address pathology, an environment of peace, beauty, and palpable care can soothe the soul and hasten recovery.
In the end, the deepest reward was not the awards or the statistics, but the quiet knowledge that, because compassion had been allowed to flow freely, the people of Tapting no longer saw the hospital as an institution—they saw it as a place where they were truly seen, truly heard, and truly loved.
During my tenure we introduced telemedicine consultation with B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, hosted clinical rotations for postgraduate physicians from the United States,conducted comprehensive health education in seven rural schools, and achieved recognition as an Adolescent-Friendly Health Institution. Clinically, we recorded one hundred percent institutional delivery with zero maternal or neonatal mortality, raised our Minimum Service
Standards score from 42 % to 65 %, and received for three consecutive years the accolade of Best Health Institution in the region. In 2025 I was deeply humbled to be named Best Health Worker of the Year.
Yet candour compels me to acknowledge the lacunae that still constrain our capacity to serve:
Absence of intensive care and neonatal intensive care facilities
Lack of mechanical ventilation and blood transfusion services
Non-availability of dental and optometric care
Inadequate laboratory space and waste-sterilisation infrastructure
Severe shortage of medical personnel (an additional two Medical Officers are
urgently required)
Spatial and logistical limitations that impede emergency response
These are not mere administrative deficiencies; they represent the precarious margin between survival and bereavement for the next mother in eclampsia, the next premature infant, the next child with high-altitude pulmonary oedema.
Dr Gyaltsen here with the hospital staff and the Musa Masala Dental Camp Team. Dr. G is front row, third from the right.
When the moment of farewell finally came, the gathering in Tapting left me speechless with emotion. The Ward Chairman, the municipal health authorities, my devoted staff, and hundreds of villagers gathered beneath the prayer flags, many with eyes glistening. Their affection enveloped me in a manner far beyond any formal recognition; it was the spontaneous outpouring of hearts that had been touched and, I dare hope, healed.
I remain particularly moved by the memory of two elderly patients, a grandfather and grandmother who had walked long distances each month simply to collect their blood pressure medicines. When, a month before my departure, I informed them that I would soon be leaving, they stood in silence for a moment and then wept openly. In that instant, understood something profound: in an age when trust between physician and patient is increasingly rare and fragile, I had been granted the extraordinary gift of being loved and respected not as a distant authority in a white coat, but as a member of their own family. Few practitioners, I believe, are fortunate enough to experience such unfeigned devotion. To have been entrusted not only with their health but with their hearts is a grace I shall carry for the rest of my days, and for which I feel immeasurably blessed.
As I step away from daily service at Wongchhu Sherpa Memorial Hospital, I carry forward an unshakable conviction: medicine, at its zenith, is applied compassion. The legacy of Wongchu Sherpa lives not in brick and mortar alone but in every act of kindness performed within these walls. I appeal to all who share his vision—individuals, foundations, and organisations worldwide—to help us close the remaining gaps so that the next generation of patients in Solukhumbu may receive care unconstrained by the limitations I have enumerated. Wherever destiny now leads me, the trust reposed in me by the people of Tapting will remain he most precious honour of my life. I shall endeavor, always, to remain worthy of it.
With deepest gratitude and enduring commitment,
Dr. Gyaltsen Gurung
Follow him on Youtube and Instagram: @dr_gyaltsen
