Chanhom Phianphaivong of the Lao Red Cross
Community support is the key to the success of the work being done by the Lao Red Cross and its partners in the country’s remote areas. The President of the LRC, Dr Snivourast Sramany points out that some of the funds needed to build wells and other water-supply systems have come from local people, while and others have donated their time and labour, he says.
Over the last five years, Lao Red Cross has been engaged in improving primary health care for impoverished people in the northern provinces of Phongsaly, Houaphan and Xiengkhouang. This has mainly involved building new or repairing existing infrastructure - such as schools, artesian wells, toilets and gravity-fed water supply systems - as well as supporting the training of teachers, providing educational materials and supplies.
The LRC has also helped local people to initiate new businesses, such as in Xiengkhouang province, where local people are now breeding bees for sale and earning extra income.
“The living conditions of some local people in our target provinces have improved since we started our work there,” Dr. Sramany says, “particularly in the primary health area, where we have focussed on clean water and basic toilets. Some groups have actually for the first time learned to use and maintain toilets.”
The total cost of the LRC’s primary health care programme in the last five years is nearly one billion kip (US$ 10,000), of which some 60 per cent has gone into the water supplies and 30 schools. Ten thousand dollars may not seem much money in other parts of the world, but in Lao, where most people still live on less than one dollar a day, it is.
Some of the funds have come from the LRC’s international partners, some from the local communities, either in cash or in kind, “which shows that the local people are pleased to have us contribute to the development of their areas,” says Dr. Sramany.
The work in the northern provinces faces many obstacles – not only are the areas seriously underdeveloped and dirt poor, but communications is also a major problems. Roads are few and far between and most materials have to be carried by hand through forests and across mountains and rivers.
But community development is not the only challenge faced by Lao Red Cross. One of the society’s main projects in the capital of Vientiane is running the national blood bank. Responsibility for the national blood service was handed to the LRC in 1991 and since 1995, it has enjoyed the cooperation of the Japanese Red Cross, which has provided the bulk of its funding and technical expertise.
It has been a fruitful cooperation: the number of unpaid blood donors nationwide has gone from zero to nearly 60 per cent since 1995 and up to 85 per cent in the Laotian capital. Most of the blood is collected via mobile sessions and the number of young donors is steadily increasing, particularly in the larger urban areas.
But now the Lao Red Cross is facing yet another challenge: the Japanese Red Cross is phasing out its support by the end of this year. An ongoing strategic planning process in the LRC’s health services is expected to identify the direction for the future of the blood programme – and new partners are being sought.
Related links:
Laos: appeals, updates and reports
News story: Changing attitudes to HIV/AIDS in Laos
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