Widows treat the sick in settlements

MOROBE is taking a step towards implementing the National Health Plan by providing basic services to its health officials and stakeholder partners to help them carry out health programmes and awareness in the province.
The provincial health division last Thursday donated two tanks to the division’s TB treatment partners at the Uni Block settlement near the University of Technology in Lae.
The treatment partner was a group of 25 widows who were trained to help the sick in the settlement.
The widows started working in 2007 and had worked very hard during the cholera outbreak despite the lack of water in the area.
TB officer Helen Palik said the widows educated settlers about TB but water had “a very big problem because they were not linked to the city’s water supply.”
She said the widows had also been integrating health responsibilities like treatment for TB, village bed attenders (VBA), testing and counselling and they also helped in distributing family planning pills to the settlers.
She said the donation of the tanks was to motivate the widows to carry out their work more efficiently to help reduce TB infections because Morobe ranked second highest in the number of TB cases.
Deputy provincial health adviser Michael Yawing said the tanks were given under the ward level planning of water supply and sanitations.
He said the stakeholder partners of the health division are important and we must work together for our own benefits.
He said this was also to strengthen their partnership with stakeholders.
Widows representative Anna Zerigai from the literacy volunteers of Morobe said the tanks would be given to the VBA and the widows.
It is understood that funding would be set aside by the provincial government to help the group in next year’s provincial budget.