Health Outreach & Awareness
Health Outreach & Awareness
We have provided regular health outreach accompanied by simply illustrated awareness/education programs, and intervention services as our long-standing mission since the beginning of our work in East Bali in 1998. Until today, we continue to (a) monitor the 27 Posyandu (monthly mother-infant health posts) and (b) conduct home visits to malnourished children to check their nutrition status, conduct consultation with the family and provide the children with nutritious food supplements and provide expert physiotherapy treatment to children with disabilities.
Why Community Health?
In 1998 when we first engaged with Ban village’s 19 scattered mountain hamlets on the steep Mount Agung and Abang slopes, they had no access to health facilities, safe water supply, sanitation, or suitable nutrition except their staples of cassava and corn, the only crops they knew how to grow in their steep volcanic ash farmland.
Our first priority was introducing relevant awareness/education programmes to address their iodine, vitamin A and mineral deficiencies and regular health checks to evaluate and advise on children’s nutrition status, maternal health, family nutrition, oral health/hygiene, safe water consumption, hygiene and sanitation.
After initiating 27 Posyandu (mother-infant monthly health posts) in 2004, we trained 5 local cadres (volunteer health workers) for each posyandu, serving all 19 Ban village hamlets, providing regular capacity building training/workshops that they now execute, monitoring, evaluation and awareness activities, supported by Puskesmas (Community Health Centre) midwives, nutritionists and nurses.
“Posyandu is crucial for our community as the sole accessible health service providing immunisations, nutritional status monitoring, and consultations. As a cadre, I witnessed cases of child malnutrition due to a lack of understanding about proper nutrition. As their closest guide, I directed them towards the right health and nutrition practices, urging them to utilise posyandu for access to services and information. Through this initiative, my goal is to eliminate nutritional issues among children in our community.”
Ni Komang Ayi,
Cegi Posyandu Cadre since 2004
48
Monthly Mother-infant Health Posts Activated
10,000+
Families Served in 5 Villages
4,900
children received micronutrient supplement
84
Disabled Residents Benefitted From Physiotherapy
411
Malnourished Children Benefited From Nutritional Aid
0
Child Mortality Rate (compared to 30% Average Previously)
>31,300
Children Received
Dental Treatment
11,841
Ear Nose & Throat [ENT] examinations recevied
Quarterly Mother-infant Health Posts
We organized capacity building programs to 27 health posts in Ban village serving up to 900 mothers and 1000 infants annually with nutritious food supplements & mineral water.
Malnutrition Outreach
& Intervention
We are developing a replicable “family model” to eliminate malnutrition among the 3,800 families living in the 19 remote Ban village hamlets, through a comprehensive 5-year interactive malnutrition study (2023 is Year 4), in partnership with Udayana University Medical Faculty, working with pregnant women and their families, mothers with babies under 2-years-old and their families, and adolescent girls.
Children’s Health Checks and Treatments
East Bali Poverty Project continues to push for health improvement of the children in Ban village by providing regular health checks and interventions, ranging from dental check, ear-nose-throat examinations, cleft lips & cleft palate surgeries and regular physiotherapy clinics for children with disabilities.
Assistance for specific illnesses
Until today, hospitals and health clinics are still not available in Ban Village. To support our community, East Bali Poverty Project continues to provide support and referral to the most suitable hospitals for seriously ill and severely malnourished children. We facilitate patients to be transferred to the nearest healthcare facilities to receive both out-patient and in-patient treatments.
