Healing in the Himalayas: Sharp team delivers GI care

At 13,000 feet in Nepal’s Mount Everest region, patients lined up outside of Kunde Hillary Hospital. Some walked for hours after fasting overnight. Inside, Dr. Hyun Kim, a gastroenterologist with Sharp Community Medical Group and affiliated with Sharp Memorial Hospital, and her team were preparing for something never done at this small hospital — which was the highest in the world — an endoscopy.

“The patients were incredibly appreciative,” Dr. Kim says. “People walked so far just for a chance to be screened. We even set up a noodle and soup station, so that they could eat after an endoscopy before their long walk home.”

For Dr. Kim, the journey to this moment began decades earlier. When she was young, Dr. Kim dreamed of a life in music. She played the flute and piano and would spend hours on the keyboard. But she also loved science.

The young Dr. Kim realized she could use science to help people, so she decided her calling was to go into medicine. With encouragement from her mentors at Boston City Hospital during her residency, she decided to focus on gastroenterology (GI), finishing her GI fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, eventually becoming a faculty member, before moving to San Diego.

A calling to help

For about 20 years, Dr. Kim has balanced a busy practice with a passion for helping others. The passion was further fueled by a life-changing encounter about 10 years ago on a hiking trip to Patagonia, Chile. On a trail, she met Mingma, a Sherpa from Nepal. When he learned that she was a doctor, he asked if she would ever visit his community to help. Every holiday season after that, he sent her a message with the same question: Would she come to Nepal?

In 2016, Dr. Kim’s father died suddenly of a heart attack. The loss gave her a new sense of urgency. “I had always wanted to start a medical foundation, and my father’s passing reminded me that life is very short, fragile,” she says.

That same year, she established the Kim International Medical Volunteer Foundation and finally kept the promise she had made to Mingma.

A healing journey

Her first trip to Nepal came in 2019, just before the pandemic. Guided by Mingma, she visited Kunde Hillary Hospital, founded by Sir Edmund Hillary to serve the Sherpa community, and spoke with local doctors to find out their medical needs.

Dr. Kim learned that stomach disease was a leading concern, with many patients facing ulcers, gastritis and Helicobacter pylori infection. Too many were dying of stomach cancer. The community asked for screenings to detect early stomach cancer.

Plans to return to Nepal were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in May 2025, Dr. Kim and a team from Sharp Memorial Hospital finally made the trip to do the first GI endoscopy. The group included Gayle Phimmasone-Cazares, a GI nurse; Romy Alonzo, a GI technician; Carlos Cazares, a licensed vocational nurse; and a GI physician from Kathmandu.

After three days of hiking to reach the hospital, the team performed 70 procedures over three days. With only one upper endoscope available, each 15-minute screening required about 25 minutes of manual cleaning. The team used this time to train the local staff on how to safely clean the equipment.

“The altitude added a layer of challenge,” Dr. Kim says. “But the patients and the team were so motivated, it made all of the hard work worthwhile.”

A commitment to return

The mission also extended beyond the hospital. Dr. Kim and her team delivered computer laptops to multiple local schools and the Buddhist monastery. The experience left the team energized, already planning for the next visit, scheduled for May 2026.

“I couldn’t have done it without my team and without the support from Sharp,” shares Dr. Kim. “It truly takes a village on both sides of the world to make this possible.”

The goal is to return once a year, possibly twice. With a second scope and an automated washer, Dr. Kim believes they could screen about 50 patients per day. The Sherpa population in the region is a few thousand, and many want to be screened so stomach cancer can be found early. Her second goal is to raise enough money to buy a second endoscope.

“When something feels important, even if it seems a little crazy, keep on going,” Dr. Kim shares as she reflects on her biggest lesson from this experience. “People will appear to help, and paths will open. After 10 years of talking about this project, to stand in that room at 13,000 feet, seeing the Himalayan Mountain through the window, and watching the first endoscopy play out on the screen, it felt like everything had a purpose.”

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