Health volunteers honoured

By GYNNIE KERO
HEALTH centres and sub-health centres in East Sepik celebrated the National Village Health Volunteer Day last week to honour volunteer health workers or who many refer to as marasin man na meri.
Catholic health village health volunteer coordinator Mary Malalita said it was a special time to celebrate work done by dedicated people who had the time to save lives in remote areas despite facing burdens.
She said the village health volunteer was a newly introduced programme established in 2007 by Save the Children to help people by giving first aid to patients before referring them to health centres and hospitals.
Malalita said one of the problems the volunteers faced in the province was a lack of community support.
She said the volunteers were trained and engaged to help save lives and people had to respect and support them.
She said there would be an assessment of the task of village health volunteers as many changes were happening and more volunteers would be trained for next year’s gap filling programme.
SCF acting senior project officer Melinda Tum said in order for the work to continue there should be good relationship between the community, health staff and the volunteers.