Doctor recalls wildfire almost hitting hospital

As Dr Fisher was evacuated he could see the flames approaching the only road in and out of the hospital

A Herefordshire GP has recalled how a wildfire came within yards of a hospital in Nepal.

Dr Crispin Fisher, from Leominster, had been at the Anandaban Hospital at the end of April when the incident happened.

He had been invited out by the charity The Leprosy Mission, a global Christian organisation which funds support for leprosy patients.

"It was a very close call, they have forest fires every now and then and the last big one by the compound was about four years ago but they have never had anything like this," he explained.

"A lot of the staff genuinely feared they would lose the whole compound."

As concern grew, Dr Fisher and his fellow visitors were called into action to help clean down some old wards so patients could be transferred further away from the fire.

He recalled: "They decided they needed to evacuate the leprosy patients from their ward block and move them into three old, rather dirty, disused wards.

"They were largely empty and rather filthy and they just told us to clean out the wards ASAP.

"Within seconds of us finishing our work we had patients wandering in, sitting on mats on the floor, lying on hard metal beds - it was all very, very basic."

Dr Crispin Fisher was rushed into action to help evacuate patients from a ward that appeared to be of the most concern

The hospital manager then demanded that international guests should be evacuated for their safety.

Admitting he felt "guilty" to be leaving the compound, Dr Fisher said he could see that the flames were "within 400 yards from the road".

On his return to the hospital two days later he said he could see that the fire had been "extremely close" to the ward block where patients had been evacuated from.

The Leominster GP estimated the scorch marks had been just 10 yards from the facility.