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Elda da Cost Soares Guterres, 26 is small, pretty and sprightly. She lives with her widowed mother in Viqueque, a town on Timor-Leste’s south coast. Like most other women in her town, she has never had a formal job. But she’s been a Red Cross volunteer for three years, teaching health and first aid in villages throughout the district.
“‘In our communities people let animals go everywhere and often there’s a lot of rubbish everywhere. There are no toilets. A lot of people around Viqueue get sick because of this but they just don’t know what to do to prevent it.
“Remote villagers also have such a long way to travel to get to health services. We are so isolated here, so far away from clinics that we need to know how to care for our health and protect ourselves against disease.”
Groups of about 15 volunteers travel to communities each week, talking to people about ways to keep healthy.
“We are seeing some small changes,” Elda says. “People are cleaning their houses and the areas around them. I think they’re already understanding the health implications of this.”
But Timor-Leste Red Cross’ community based first aid programmes teach people more than vital medical response skills. They also tackle long term health issues facing remote communities, explains New Zealand Red Cross delegate, Rose Fenton.
“Community based first aid has a first aid component but it is also about disease prevention,” says the trained nurse who worked with Aboriginal communities on Australia’s remote Palm Island before coming to East Timor.
“It’s about health promotion and social mobilisation. Prevention of diseases – making sure people wash their hands before they eat, covering food for flies, getting rid of stagnant water where mossies can breed.
“This is all fundamental in the Timor-Leste context because with poor access to health services and inadequate curative care it is essential to focus on prevention.”
More than 70 per cent of Timor-Leste’s population live in rural communities, often in extremely isolated conditions with very little access to formal health care. It is not at all unusual that people need to walk a day or more to get to a health clinic, meaning that those too ill to make the trip must stay where they are and take their luck.
Timor-Leste Red Cross Secretary General Isabelle Guterres also emphasises the need for basic health care in rural communities, especially for common ailments which are relatively easy to care for, if a person knows how.
“Very simple problems like diarrhoea and dehydration can be met through simple first aid education,” she says. “Teaching someone about rehydration can save lives.
“There are very few toilets and lots of flies, so simple info like covering food and washing hands can be very effective. There are also very few clinics so people need to know how to deliver basic first aid before they can see a doctor.
“There are a lot of very good traditional medicines around but more and more the younger generation is not learning these skills. They are moving towards western methods of health care but don’t have the medicines to practice. So we are losing traditional medicine as well.”
The development of Red Cross health teams are a key strategy for Timor-Leste Red Cross – developing the skills of community based volunteers, like Elda, who are trained and work in the communities where they live.
In addition to providing much need health services, the skills also offer volunteers a hope for the future.
“It is very tough to get work out here,” Elda says. “People with primary school, high school and university educations struggle equally to get work, so volunteering for Red Cross is a good thing for us.
“Our community really needs first aid education. I became a volunteer because I wanted to know how to reduce some of the common diseases we see here. I wanted to learn how to teach my community about good health.”