The Nepal Cleft and Burn Center is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City. It’s touted as Nepal’s leading burn treatment center and its first and foremost teaching hospital for burn and cleft palate surgeries.
Jim Webber, a Park City resident and longtime KPCW supporter, established the center through his work selling rugs. He started a rug and carpet factory with Tibetan refugees he met in Kathmandu and Nepal. Over the years of running the business and traveling back and forth to Nepal, Webber said he wanted to help the community.
“I ended up connecting with an amazing humanitarian physician in Kathmandu, and it just became a no-brainer,” he said. “I was going to support him and build him a clinic to operate out of.”
Webber started the nonprofit in 2002 and the 16,000 square foot hospital opened in 2014. It filled the gap left by other organizations like Operation Smile and Doctors Without Borders, which could only support locals for a few weeks each year.
"Our hospital is a continuous, ongoing part of the medical infrastructure of Nepal, and we have met the need for cleft lip and palates,” he said
Webber said the hospital originally focused only on cleft lip and palate procedures. That’s because Nepal has one of the highest rates of cleft lip and palate births. He said it may be genetic or due to prenatal nutritional issues.
However, his team also saw the need to help locals with burns.
“Nepal has 30 million people crammed into a tiny space two thirds the size of the state of Utah, with a population almost of Canada, combined with rampant poverty and a high rate of illiteracy, and they have a lot of children so and more than half of this 30 million population cooks over open fires,” he said.
Cleft lip and palate surgeries require a skilled plastic surgeon, just like burn procedures. So, the hospital started providing burn treatments as well.
Webber said in 2014, the hospital treated 200 burns. Last year, it treated around 2,000.
Webber and his partners have now broken ground on another hospital in Nepal’s second most populated area so they can better meet burn treatment demand.
To raise money for the project, Webber is hosting a fundraiser May 17 at Salt Lake’s Natural History Museum. A $135 ticket includes food, an open bar, a social hour, a silent auction and live music. Webber and the Nepal hospital’s lead physician will speak.
Webber said the fundraiser is the Nepal Cleft and Burn Center’s main source of income every year and 95% of the money raised supports the cause.
