DHULIKHEL: He may not be much of a doctor but the children’s faces light up when Dush The Clown shuffles into their ward in his floppy shoes and red nose to prescribe his unique brand of medical care.
Dush — alias 36-year-old Israeli David Barashi — is in Nepal to teach doctors and nurses that laughter really can be the best medicine, with the latest evidence suggesting clowning around in hospitals can boost patient care.
“Everyone can take something from the clown,” said Barashi, who has worked as a qualified medical clown for ten years.
“When you are in a hospital, you shouldn’t just see the sick and the painful side of the patient, you should see the healthy side, the side that wants to be a kid.
“We all have a child inside of us and clowning in hospital is about empowering childhood.”
Studies have shown that clowning programmes can reduce pain and anxiety in children and adults, increase the success rate of in-vitro fertilisation, lower blood pressure and improve the care of elderly suffering from dementia.
Barashi, who holds a degree in medical clowning from the University of Haifa, shows doctors, nurses and lecturers how he is able to use clowning with children to make them feel better ahead of surgery.
He worked with orphans in Ethiopia, tsunami survivors in Asia and children in quake-hit Haiti before he was invited by the Israeli embassy in Nepal to visit Dhulikhel Hospital, 30 kilometres southeast of Kathmandu.
AFP
