Bahrain prince under investigation for ‘gift’ of 2,000 vaccines to Nepal village 

Sheikh Mohamed Hamad Mohamed Al Khalifa arrived in Kathmandu on Monday night along with 2,000 vaccine doses

Credit: NISHANT S. GURUNG /AFP

A Bahraini Prince has triggered an investigation in Nepal after bringing 2,000 Covid-19 vaccinations into the country as a “gift" for a local village ahead of a planned climb of Mount Everest later this month.

Sheikh Mohamed Hamad Mohamed Al Khalifa arrived in Kathmandu on Monday night with a 16-man team including three British nationals to climb the world’s highest mountain.

But he also imported enough does of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to inoculate 1,000 people – apparently as a donation to a Gurkha village which recently named a local mountain after the Bahraini royal family.

Nepal’s medicines regulator said it was looking into how the vaccines were imported into the country without a licence and without the knowledge of the Ministry of Health.  

A spokesman for the country’s Department of Drug Administration (DDA) said the donation “did not meet the required procedure” of the national inoculation campaign, which is prioritising the over-65s in a country that has suffered 3,000 Covid-related deaths.

“We are investigating and will take a decision on whether [the vaccines] can be used," he added.

A photo published on the “Bahrain Everest” Instagram page Monday showed the climbers posing in front of a Bahrain Defence Force VIP jet with two large boxes.  

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“The blue containers … contain 2000 doses of vaccines that the Kingdom of Bahrain has donated to the village of Samagaun, Nepal on orders of HH [Sheikh] Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa,” a caption added.

Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, said the monarchy was using coronavirus as "a PR opportunity". 

"This misguided act of philanthropy is indicative of a regime that assumes its wealth gives it the right to run roughshod over the laws of a sovereign state, potentially spoiling vital vaccines in the process," he added. 

The proposed donation appears to be in response to local leaders naming a section of the mountains the Bahrain Royal Peaks following previous climbs.

Renaming local peaks after dignitaries is not uncommon in the Himalayas, where mountain guides and Sherpas have experienced a torrid year without the usual income that tourists and mountaineers provide.

Residents of another village in the district previously named a mountain “Harry Hill”, after Prince Harry, who helped to rebuild a school in the area after a devastating earthquake in 2015.

The Sheikh’s team consists of members of the Bahraini Royal Guards, including Britons Richard Warren McConnel, Phillip Clough, and Christopher Anthony Burrows.

They previously obtained a special permit to travel to the Himalayas in October — despite a ban on foreign visitors due to the pandemic — in order to climb the 8,163-metre (26,781-feet) Mount Manaslu and the 6,119-metre (20,075-feet) Lobuche.

Thaneshwor Guragain, a spokesman for Seven Summits Trek, a company providing Sherpas and mountain guides, said that Sheikh Mohamed and his team would stay in Nepal for 80 days.

They would finish a week-long quarantine before attempting an ascent of Everest later this month, with an entourage of around 100 people in total.

"It will be a rare feat if the royal family members are able to scale to the top of the world," he said.