A comprehensive scheme of health manpower development for Nepal

How does a land-locked, mountainous, newly emergent country produce the manpower to serve the essential health care needs of its population? The absence of a tradition of medical education, a paucity of medical personnel and the major problems of deployment and communication pose immense challenges to health manpower producers. The policies, plans and programmes of the Government of Nepal to develop appropriate levels of manpower and the discernible problems and prospects faced by the Institute of Medicine are examined. The institutional framework that has been established for an ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the processes and some of the successes achieved have been described.