Tiny health posts mean a lot to Kalimantan villagers
Tiny health posts mean a lot to Kalimantan villagers
By Primastuti Handayani
SANGGAU, West Kalimantan (JP): The road to Sei Kelik village
is bumpy and muddy. The motorcycle is the only vehicle that can
travel it. Every month paramedics from Batang Tarang subdistrict
have to pass this way to visit mothers and their babies.
Around midday, about 40 women with their toddlers have
gathered at the health post, waiting for their turn.
One of them is 43-year old Asih, who has come with her three-
year-old son, Paul.
Asih says she is a regular visitor to the health post.
"My son is quite healthy now," she said. "It was different
when we didn't have this post."
She recalled that two years ago, before the health post was
established, Paul and his two brothers and two sisters were very
frail.
Then, she had to trek four kilometers to get to the nearest
community health center.
For the paramedics from the Batang Tarang Health Center, Sei
Kelik is one of 45 off-the-beaten-track health service posts that
they have to visit each month.
Nurhaida Simanjutak, one of the paramedics, said that the most
common diseases found in the area are diarrhea, respiratory
illness, particularly pneumonia, and skin ailments.
The paramedics also monitor the weight of children and
administer various inoculations.
The villagers' enthusiasm for and anticipation of the
paramedics's arrival reflect their growing awareness of the
importance of good health care, Nurhaida said. This newfound
awareness she attributes to the Sanggau Child Survival Project.
The program was launched three years ago by World Vision
International Indonesia (WVII) in cooperation with the Ministry
of Health. World Vision has also enlisted the cooperation of
the Samaria and Harapan Katulistiwa foundations.
The project is currently run in Batang Tarang and the
neighboring Tayan Hilir district, both in Sanggau, which is 250
km east of the West Kalimantan capital, Pontianak.
The Child Survival Project goes beyond simply looking after
the health of the villagers and their children. It also helps
villagers with basic sanitation.
At Tae, a village of 1,300 people, five km west of Batang
Tarang, the program has installed a gravity-flow piped water
system to get water from the spring.
Alfred Gontha, training coordinator of the project, said that
in the old days villagers used the dirty swamp water for bathing
and washing.
"The clean water has improved their health. We don't have
severe dehydration cases of diarrhea here," he said.
Five years ago, 16 people, including children, died of
diarrhea in the village. "We used the calamity to convey our
message about the importance of sanitation and to ask them to pay
more attention for their health," he said.
The water system is operated and maintained by the people.
Each family pays Rp 200 a week to cover the maintenance costs.
Gontha said the Child Survival Project uses simple everyday
illustrations to convey its messages to Tae's villagers, most of
whom work as rubber tappers.
"We compare their situation when they are healthy and sick.
When they're sick, they're not earning money," he said, noting
that, as a rubber tapper, a villager can earn Rp 6,000 a day.
Rp 6,000 a day is the income they stand to lose if they fail
to take care of their health, he said.
Untung Sidupa, project manager, said Batang Tarang and Tayan
Hilir were chosen for the project because of their high maternal
and infant mortality rates
The two districts together have 27 villages and 84 hamlets.
Because of the geographic conditions, not all the villages are
covered by World Vision's project.
The US$860,000 project was originally financed jointly by the
United States Agency for International Development and World
Vision Relief and Development.
Officially, the project finished last month, after three
years. But World Vision International Hong Kong picked it up last
month and injected $100,000 funds into it this month.
Edy Sianipar, WVII area manager for Jakarta, West and Central
Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan, said that the Hong Kong-based
foundation has decided to support the project because it found
that the project has been very useful for the community.
"The amount may be small, but we are sure that it will be very
helpful," he said.
The chiefs of Batang Tarang and Tayan Hilir districts
confirmed this.
Abdul Karim, chief of the Batang Tarang, said the project has
been effective in encouraging villagers to pay more attention to
their health, especially that of mothers and children.
M. Syafarani Mastar, chief of Tayan Hilir, asked if the
project could be expanded to all the villages in his area.
"The project has successfully changed the bad habits of the
community here, especially with regard to their health," he said.
"By having clean water, they have started to use the toilets
instead of going to the river," he said.
But neither Abdul Karim nor Syafarani are confident that the
villagers could run the project by themselves if, one of these
days, World Vision decides to pull out of their areas.
Ascobat Gani, a member of the evaluation team, agrees that the
sustainability of the project will not be established quickly.
"It should go step by step, to keep the community health
system working after the project no longer exists," he said.
Ascobat, the dean of the Public Health School of the
University of Indonesia, said the community and the local
authorities must be thoroughly prepared.
The project has not been without obstacles, he said.
"Usually the main obstacle is the culture in the community,
like ganjur here," he said, referring to the one-week traditional
celebrations of a good harvest, which often involve gambling and
alcohol.
Sally K. Stansfield, a professor of medical epidemiology at
McGill University in Montreal, Canada, heads the project
evaluation team. She said the fact that most husbands and wives
work has caused problems for children's nutrition.
"When mothers leave their children to go to work, the people
who are responsible for the children do not pay much attention to
taking care of the children," she said. "They are not fed
enough," she added.
Stansfield said she has proposed the establishment of
children's care centers in the villages. "Through such a center,
we could provide additional nutritious food," she said.
The new idea might not be easily accepted by the community,
Stansfield said, but it is worth to try.