Dr. Ramesh Kandel is Nepal’s first registered geriatrician and the founding president of the National Institute on Ageing and Health. He earned his M.D. in Geriatric Medicine from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, India, and his MBBS from the B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences (BPKIHS) in Nepal. His outstanding career and contributions to geriatric care have established him as a leader and advocate for the older population in Nepal.
He currently serves as the Clinical Fellowship Director of Geriatric Medicine and holds the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and Geriatrics at the Rapti Academy of Health Sciences in Dang, Nepal. He has played a key role as a principal consultant for the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) in developing the National Geriatrics Strategy, Geriatric Services Standards, and Geriatric Online Learning Systems. His contributions have been crucial in training medical officers, nurses, and primary healthcare workers, ultimately improving the quality of care for the elderly population.
Dr. Kandel previously worked as a consultant in the Healthy-Aging Department at WHO-SEARO in India and as the Chief of Geriatric Services at the Hospital for Advanced Medicine and Surgery (HAMS) in Nepal. His research focuses on various aspects of geriatric medicine, including caregiver burden in Alzheimer’s dementia and the impact of frailty on surgical outcomes.
SELECT PUBLICATIONS
- Chatterjee P, Kumar P, Kandel R, Madan R, Tyagi M, Kumar DA, Khan MA, Desai G, Chaudhary P, Gupta S, Grover K, Dey AB. “Nordic walking training and nutritional supplementation in pre-frail older Indians: an open-labelled experimental pre-test and post-test pilot study to develop intervention model.” BMC Geriatr (2018)
- Namdeo M, Kandel R, Thakur PK, Mohan A, Dey AB, Mitra DK. “Old age-associated enrichment of peripheral T regulatory cells and altered redox status in pulmonary tuberculosis patients.” Eur J Immunol. (2020)
- Banerjee J, Behal P, Satapathy S, Kandel R, Upadhyay AD, Dwivedi S, Kumar L, Dey AB. “Implementing and validating a care protocol for older adults with cancer in resource limited settings with a newly developed screening tool.” J Geriatr Oncol. (2021)