A major initiative of The Sumba Foundation has been to establish primary health care clinics in the areas of the island that are not properly served by the government health system, and to improve the facilities of the three main hospitals in West Sumba.
It is a sad fact that seriously ill people are dying in the villages because they cannot get to the governments clinics that are, in most cases, are many hours away from home. Imagine carrying your dying child for half a day to a clinic that has no medicine to help. Many villagers have little faith in the government clinics and when ill they will first seek the services offered by shamans, only as a last resort will they go to the clinics and often by then it is too late. We can and are doing something about this.
The following is a list of our current initiatives:
In 2001 we saw an urgent need for a clinic in the Rua and Lamboya regions, where villagers were walking more than 10 miles to the nearest government health clinic that more often than not had no medicine available to help these people; it was a truly terrible situation. In 2002, we completed construction of our first clinic. The clinic has a large waiting room and three rooms for examination and treatment of patients. Two toilets have been constructed in a separate building outside the clinic. In addition, visiting nurses and doctors from Australia and the United States use the clinic for special treatments and training of the clinic staff. In 2004 we extended the building adding more exam and observation rooms, a dental clinic and a malaria laboratory to accommodate the ever increasing number of patients. The clinic is staffed with four well-trained nurses supervised with VSO volunteer doctors and nurses, the clinic is treating an average of 40 patients a day six days a week. This clinic is also the base for our Malaria Eradication Program, where we have another three nurses trained in microscopy who examine the malaria blood samples collected from the surrounding villages and from patients at the clinic. The Sumba Foundation Clinic also has been providing dental care and eye exams. Every year dentists vacationing at the nearby Nihiwatu Resort volunteer their services and treat hundreds of villagers at our clinic. Hundreds of prescription eyeglasses have also been distributed free of charge to those that need them. It has not been easy but with the help of foreign medical volunteers, and with medicines and medical supplies from Direct Relief International, we are proud to say that The Sumba Foundation Clinics are now considered to be the best medical facilities on the island. It is drawing the attention of senior WHO, Asian Development Bank and foreign governmental organizations who are interested to see our facilities. And now villagers and even senior government officials from distant areas of the island, where the government has well-established clinics and hospitals, are making their way to our clinics.
On January 1st 2006 we opened a second Sumba Foundation Malaria Clinic in Watukerere Village. This clinic is helping more than 3,000 people living in the Lamboya Bawa area. This clinic provides the same services as the Hobawawi Clinic but it does not have a dental care facility. The clinic has two general nurses and one parasitology trained nurse to provide the needed health care.
On June 1st 2007 we officially opened a third Sumba Foundation Malaria Clinic at Rua Beach. This clinic is providing medical aid to the thousands of people living in the Rua area. It provides the same services as our other clinics at Hobawawi and Watukerere. The clinic has two general nurses and one parasitology trained nurse to provide the needed health care for the people in the area.
The midwife at the Pahola Clinic is the only health link to the 1,500 people living in this very remote region on the Southwest coast of the Rua district. Prior to receiving our support she had to walk five hours, each way, to the governments’ medicine distribution facility just to place an order for the medicine she would need for the coming month. A week later she would have to once again make the trek to pick up what typically would be less than half of the order she had placed. Naturally within a week she would be out of medicine and only able to provide her community with medical advice. The clinic facility also doubles as her house in which her husband and three children lived together in cramped quarters with no water or toilets. The tin roof of the building was rusted through and leaking and all of the wood was termite ridden, the building was falling apart. She desperately needed our help. We started by delivering medicines and medical equipment to her in 2003. This allowed her to be able to provide care to the community on a constant basis. With a donation from Graham Farrar rebuilt the clinic from the ground up in 2004. We also were able to bring in a well nearby with the generous donation given by Steve and Angela Camp. The well pump is powered by a generator that we placed at the clinic so that the nurse now has electricity when she needs it for nighttime emergencies.
The building at the Pededewatu Midwife Clinic is in good condition but like most of the clinics in the region there was no water nearby nor is there a reliable supply of medicine being issued by the government. We have been ensuring that the nurse has the medicines and equipment she needs to help the local people in her community. She has also benefited from the medical training that she has received from volunteer doctors vacationing at Nihiwatu.
We started drilling a well next to the clinic that was completed in February 2005. By providing clean water, toilets and a reliable supply of medicines to the Pededewatu Clinic we have set the foundation for better healthcare for the neighboring community.
This is a midwife clinic that was meant to be focused on pre-and post natal care for the surrounding community. Since we took this clinic into our healthcare program in 2002, the Watukerere Midwife has been able to provide good quality general health services for the 1,500 people she serves. The midwife clinic is next to our malaria clinic and right outside the walls of the isolated ancient traditional village of Watukerere. We have been supporting the midwife with medicines and supplies and have been able to include her in our training programs. Like the clinic at Pahola, the Watukerere Midwife Clinic is also doubles as her house in which she lives with her four year old adopted daughter, the child’s mother died at birth. We renovated the building for her, as we did at Pahola, to make it fit for living and to better serve as a real midwife clinic.
There are three hospitals and 16 major clinics in West Sumba. These are the only facilities that are staffed with doctors and they are the only places where serious medical cases can be treated, and where we evacuate the patients from our clinics to when necessary. Each month this year we have been averaging a dozen evacuations from our Sumba Foundation Clinics to one of the hospitals in Waikabubak. It is in our interest to have the facilities that we take our patients to to be able to provide better critical care than they are now capable of providing. All of these facilities are in need of more up to date medical equipment and surgery supplies. With the help of Direct Relief International we are now able to start helping improve these important facilities.
We work closely with Dr. Martin Caley who is the head of the Sumbanese government health services, and together we have been able to identify what is most urgently needed. We placed the order with Direct Relief International in December 2003 and in October 2004 the 40 foot long container loaded with equipment finally landed at our Headquarters at Nihiwatu, a second container was received in 2006 and we look forward to another in 2008. More than 120 government officials from throughout Sumba and Eastern Indonesia accompanied the Governor to our headquarters for the official handover ceremony of modern examination beds, a wide variety of surgical equipment and supplies, autoclaves, nebulizers, and much more. We intend to continue donating equipment and working to improve the ability of the hospitals to treat their patients.
One of the best ways we can contribute to creating a better healthcare system is by improving the skills of the healthcare professionals on the island. We have seen the vast improvements made in the quality of diagnosis and the level of care provided by our staff at our Foundation clinics at Hobawawi, Watukerere and Rua Beach. The first steps were made possible by on the job training by dedicated volunteer doctors, in particular Dr. Dave Griffith who has been returning to help us since his first visit in 2001. Since 2006 we have been able to maintain continuity in our training programs by working with the VSO (Volunteer Service Organization) that first placed Dr. Nora Alban with us in 2006 and RN Susie Woodal in 2007. They have working at our Hobawawi, Watukerere and Rua Beach clinics and have been a key component of our health program. Our goal is to continue training the nurses and improving the facilities at the other clinics and the many midwives that we support, so that they too can provide the same high standard of professional service for the people in their surrounding communities.