Rajesh Gongal, a general surgeon at Patan Academy of Health Sciences, is the founding chairman of Hospice Nepal, the first palliative care center to be established in his country in 2000. He has been passionately working in this field for the past 16 years and has recently completed an eighteen months' Fellowship in palliative care from Northern Ireland Hospice, Belfast. He is also the founding dean of the School of Medicine of Patan Academy of Health Sciences, a medical school based on the principle of social accountability established to train doctors for rural Nepal. He is also the founding president of the Nepal Ambulance Service, the first ambulance service with trained Emergency Medical Technicians, a call center using the three digit number for the first time in the country.