Middle East

Nepali psychiatrist guidance for Nepalese in Israel

A structured government-to-government agreement between Nepal and Israel now sends Nepali caregivers, most of them women, to work in geriatric homes and long-term care centres across Israel, a role that is emotionally demanding in ways quite different from factory or domestic work elsewhere. Caregivers spend their days closely supporting elderly residents, often through serious illness, cognitive decline and death, in a language and culture that takes real time to learn, and the emotional weight of that work, known as compassion fatigue in the caregiving field, is a genuine and under-discussed occupational risk. Unlike some Gulf or Southeast Asian labour routes, this programme is more formally structured, which can mean fewer risks around passport retention or recruitment debt, but it does not remove the difficulty of the work itself, the distance from one's own family while caring intensively for someone else's elderly relative, or the disorientation of adjusting to Hebrew and a healthcare system built very differently from home.