Travel: From Earthquake to Earthquake... Part 2

In the past 4-5 months, I have been given various responsibilities. Initially, I was given the responsibility to work with the Port-au-Prince team as a capacity builder. Here my job was to work with my team to develop the capacity of our 6 partner organizations. I completed this work in about a month.

As the cholera epidemic broke out, I was immediately sent to an area called "Artibonite". Artibonite was a rural area. I worked in this area for about 34 days. During these days, I visited an estimated 128 villages. The main task was to create awareness among people about clean water, the use of toilets and handwashing, and to provide as much help as possible to do so. In these 34 days, 32,000 homes were provided with essential items to prevent cholera, such as chlorine tablets, soap, buckets, etc. Apart from this, programs and advertisements were continuously run on the radio in that area to create awareness about cholera. Advertisements were also made on the microphone in the weekly market. Public meetings were organized regularly.

I remember my first public meeting. As soon as I started the meeting, there were about 400-500 people present, one person came to the meeting and started crying loudly. When asked the reason, he said that his brother had just passed away in the hospital and the reason was cholera. I consoled the brother a little and sent him to the hospital. This incident had a deep impact on my meeting. I decided that discussing this incident in a systematic way would definitely create awareness among the people and other people could be saved from dying. The result was good. This large crowd took an interest in my talk. Everyone listened to my talk peacefully.

During the discussion, I was a little worried seeing the extent of people's misconceptions and rumours about cholera. When I asked what the causes of cholera are, the answers were:

• Cholera is caused by eating rice. 
• Drinking river water causes it. 
• City people don't like us, so they did this. 
• People from the neighbouring country have thrown something into our river by helicopter. 
• Nepalese people have spread this disease. 
• Cholera is caused by eating vegetables. 
• Etc. etc. 

No one even said that this disease is caused by contaminated water. This discussion lasted for about 2 hours and everyone participated peacefully and with interest. Then everyone was given soap and chlorine tablets. We did this in all the villages. In the end, everyone came to me and asked for soap and chlorine tablets. It was a lot of fun to do this work. We left at 6 am and returned to the office at 7 pm. Come to the office and prepare for the next day.

After these 34 days, I was called back to Port-au-Prince. Here I was given the responsibility of Public Health Coordinator. I have to perform this duty till 20th February. After that, I will have to work as Cholera Coordinator till 20th March.

More in the next installment...