Saipu AHEAD
Saipu Action for Health and Development
Besides education, public health is another very important topic for a real support to the development of the region of Saipu. In fact, the population lives in very precarious sanitary conditions. Most houses don’t have running water or toilets. Infected wounds are a common reality, especially among children. Several ordinary illnesses could be avoided through a better daily hygiene. It frequently happens that young ladies die while giving birth: the smallest complication can result in a family tragedy, because the distance from the capital city (one day by bus and one day on foot) often means help cannot be obtained early enough.
Objectives
Saipu AHEAD has started in 2001, with the aim to substantially improve public health and hygiene in the village of Saipu. The project’s specific goals are:
- A general improvement of the hygienic conditions in the village as well as a substantial reduction of the most common diseases and of the number of deaths during child delivery.
- The construction of appropriate toilets for everybody.
- The training of a youth group working to develop activities in the interest of the whole community.
- The development of saving and micro-credit programmes to increase the people’s financial capacity and consequently allow better access to medical treatment.
- A strong decrease in the common gender and cast discrimination.
Strategy
after following an intensive course with a Nepalese specialist, six young ladies of Saipu now work as social operators or facilitators within their own village. Using didactic materials (posters and games), they work with groups of children, women, and men separately. The groups discuss different topics related to public health, prevention and treatment of common diseases, daily nutrition, gender and cast discrimination, etc. The originality of this program is that it does not simply consist in learning external, imported, concepts, but rather it searches for “positive deviances” within the community itself. In other words the goal is to identify families where a better result can be observed with the same, poor, initial conditions. These families become “internal” models, easier to understand and adopt. This program has already been implemented with very positive results in other areas of the country.
Results
The work of the social operators has been held back by the severe political crisis the country has been going through during the past few years. For long periods, the ladies couldn’t work because the government banned gatherings of people. They couldn’t take part in the refresher courses, nor reach the responsible specialist, because travelling along the district’s paths had become extremely dangerous due to multiple armed fights between the army and the rebels. In spite of that, especially during cease-fire periods, the six social operators carried out fairly good work. With the new political peace, this project can be re-launched, and the ladies will be able to continue their activity within the community, so as to achieve the objectives that were fixed.
A health post in memory of Gianni Goltz
In 2009, Saipu Ahead was not only relaunched but also improved. Together with the family of Gianni Goltz, the Alpinist who died in spring 2008 after reaching the top of mount Everest, we intend to build a small health post in Saipu, for which capable staff will be trained. A piece of land has already been bought for this next to the school of Saipu.