HEALTH

Charity helps in humanitarian cause

By MULAI ROBBY
FEMALE students attending Kiriwina Secondary School in the Trobriand Islands, Kiriwina Goodenough District of Milne Bay, recently received valuable assistance from an international charity organisation to help them attend classes with comfort and confidence.
Australian-based Caring for Kiriwina (CFK) Foundation assisted the students with dignity kits containing useful items of dress and information to contain emotions caused by the female cycle. Delivering stationeries to the school, CFK discovered the plight of female students who most often missed classes when they are sick. Kiriwina custom dictates that such sickness is never to be known nor discussed in public especially in the presence of male relatives and male population in general. To do so is a shameful act. Thus affected girls go into self-isolation to avoid discovery.
Kiriwina Secondary School principal, Cyril Tomodiwaona, thanked CFK Foundation for its continued assistance to the school especially in supplying students with basic stationaries as well. He says such assistance is received with great appreciation.
CFK Country Manager Tokolodaya Nason Bwaina, says Kiriwina Secondary School is in the remote islands heavily populated with only two small trade stores serving them.
“With no real economic base, it is really challenging for the female population on the islands. Affordability is the main constrain,” he said.

Village birth attendants
The foundation has been working on the islands for over a decade now assisting villagers in many humanitarian programmes.
Its main project is village birth assistance and training of local midwives. Almost 200 local midwives from villages near and around Losuia district headquarter have been trained. The foundation is conducting more training programs for local midwifes from other villages.
Recently trained midwifes received from CFK birth delivery kits to help them deliver babies safely. The foundation’s recent newsletter says already supplied in the Kits were essential safe birthing equipment
Included in the Kits were nappies, soap, torches, baby knitted clothes, caps, masks, hand sanitizers, hand gloves, battery and solar operated lanterns and many other necessary safe birthing aids.
It mentioned that women in PNG face higher mortality rate in child birth than their counterparts in Australia.
Improving the quality of maternity care services can save the lives of women and babies, and this ongoing project is to provide more training on basic and emergency skills in maternal and newborn health.
Distributing VBA delivery kits to attendants recently, Bwaina, said the foundation saw there was need for the VBA project especially in the villages to continue.
He said CFK contribution was to complement services provided by the district health center and four sub health centers in Kiriwina in helping to care for mothers and their babies.
He said however the biggest challenge is the high rate of berths as opposed to limited resources provided by government services, donor partners as well as volunteers.

VBA head on Kiriwina, Ruth Boaz, in her tribute to the Lawton family says helping village women to deliver their babies safely brings solemn joy to the mothers, their families and communities as a whole.
Senior Nursing Sister at the District Health Centre, Florence Mokolawa, while appreciating the work of CFK Foundation, appealed for more international and local donor assistance to help deliver Kiriwina babies safely and provide other health services in the villages.
The VBA concept was first introduced on the islands in the 1990s by a government donor partnership. However the project ceased when it could not be locally sustained financially.
CFK then came in to progress the project. It also assists in Education, Health Hygiene, clean drinking water and related social projects
The Foundation was set up by an Australian Missionary couple, Doctor Reverend Ralp Lawton and Marama Margret, deceased, who served Kiriwina United Church for ten years prior to independence.
The Foundation sources donations from its partners to assist Kiriwina people.

• Mulai Roby is a freelance writer.

Students and volunteers start health checks

A STUDENT union is initiating a unique programme with the help of volunteer medical officers to provide free medical checks and other services to their people in the villages in East Sepik.
The Kubalia Tertiary Students Union (KTSU), a network comprising students mainly from Numbo and Sausso LLGs in Kubalia, Yangoru-Saussia district, has been carrying out education programmes in their area since 2012.
In recent times, they have trialled a programme called the Rural Adventure Surgical-Medical Programme where volunteering medical officers are providing services to the villages that they visit.
The first trial of the concept was carried out at the Sassoya Sub-Health Centre in Kubalia, where consultations and registration were done from Nov 28 to Dec 1 in 2022. A surgical clinic followed registration that from De 2-7.
More than 485 patients with different cases were registered, including medical, surgical, obstetrics, dental and others. A total of 33 patients received minor surgery and 40 were referred to the general hospital in Wewak.
Sadly, 412 patients were not attended to due to limited time and they have rebooked for this year. Dr Gideon Kambaki assisted in offering the services to those who came for the clinic.

To carry out that programme and other initiatives, KTSU is organising a fundraiser later this year.
The students are also hosting a fundraising event to gather funds and resources to help them carry out awareness programs later this year.
In 2012, the University of Papua New Guinea Kubalia Students Association (UPNG KSA) went for an awareness programme to speak to students in elementary, primary and secondary schools in Numbo and Sausso LLGs of the district. The themes of the programme included formal education, health, environment, law and order and Christian, spiritual development and family unit.
The impact of the programme and feedback were positive and in 2018 the KTSU was formed, where students in other universities also became members and participants in these awareness programs to help motivate and guide the young in the schools in the district back in East Sepik.
Today, the students from the four main government universities and Divine Word University are among 500 active members of the union as they want to motivate and educate the young in primary and secondary schools to work hard, set goals and prepare to advance themselves to realise their personal goals and be a positive contributor to their families, villages, district and province.
Payments or donations to support KTSU and the programs can be made to their BSP cheque account: 7015522118. For more information, contact: KTSU Executives and working committees on email:[email protected] Phone Numbers: 73692740,72319132,79566217,73035137.