Sumba has natural beauty
and cultural uniqueness, however it has also obstacles in transportation,
communication, education and health. However, these did not discourage me to
return back to my hometown after completing my study at STIKES Wirahusada
Yogyakarta majoring in Public Health. I am Aryanti Rawambaku, from Karita village,
Tabundung district, East Sumba regency. Tabundung is located in the southern part of Sumba island and its hilly
area slows down the development of the region compared to others.
I am working at
Banggawatu Public Health Center (Puskesmas), which covers five villages,
Banggawatu, Tapil, Tarimbang, Praimudi and Uimanu. The areas are about 80 km,
Southwest of Waingapu. As a health staff in a new Public Health Center, I found
that the facilities are limited, including no clean water pipelines, electricity
and communication networks, including at staff’s dormitory. Therefore, the
health office of East Sumba regency delivers water using vehicle every week.
There are 22 people who work here, and I am responsible for health promotion
programs and community empowerment related to health, health advocacy,
counseling on Clean and Healthy Lifestyle (PHBS) of households, schools, health
institutions and public places, development of health promotional media,
empowerment of Community-Based Health service (Posyandu UKBM, poskestren) and
partnerships in health sector.
My Activities is related with the aim to improve the quality of public health in the surrounding of the Public Health Center through socialization about people’s health, cleanliness of the house and the environment, and improving nutrition through training how to process local food covering processing cassava into Onde-onde, sweet corn into snacks and moringa leaves into jelly. We also conduct some counselings on Clean and Healthy Lifestyles at several schools and I was in charge to give counseling at Tarimbang Elementary School (SDI) and facilitated 77 elementary students practicing of washing hands properly.
The challenge I often
faced when I served the community is not their ability to understand the
message but the difficulty to change behavior in implementing clean and healthy
lifestyles, for example when they are going to eat, they want to eat
immediately and wash their hands carelessly. Then, in program of constructing
toilet, they said 'Ok, ready to build it' but the fact they ignored the
program. It did not work because they have no money, still busy and others have
not made it. Some of those already have toilets but they did not use them
because they are accustomed to defecating in the forest for practical reasons
without much water. Their tendency to build toilets is sense of reluctance and
fear of the local village officials.
The initial strategy of
our health team is having closer approach to the families living at the
surrounding of Public Health Center, collaborating the community to construct toilets by
implementing system of money gathering to build a toilet, having collaboration
with village officials because each village provides budget to construct 10
permanent toilets per year. So far half of the houses around the Public Health
Center have toilets already. Another health education method is by watching
movie in people's house that will enable me to have dialogue with them and to hear
their health complaints.
Working in a new Public Health
Center is not easy, on one hand I serve health needs and campaign clean and
healthy life to the community in difficult circumstance, on the other hand I
have to be the example of clean and healthy life itself. There was an
interesting motivation when I took part in Stube HEMAT training about Survival Skills as a student in
Yogyakarta. I have survived until I
finished my study, so I should have more
capability to exist in my hometown by applying my knowledge. (Aryanti
Rawambaku).
Comments
Post a Comment