Volunteers share health, hygiene information

By Dr. Michael Dohn, August 30, 2007 [Diocese of Southern Ohio] Training volunteer health promoters is part of the effort of missionaries Anita and Michael Dohn, a physician couple from Southern Ohio, who work with the Episcopal Church in the Dominican Republic. After a series of workshops on the major causes of childhood deaths, the promoters regularly visit their assigned families.

One health promoter was visiting a family in which everyone had a cold. As she sat in their two-room shack, she saw a two-year-old girl with respiratory distress lying quietly on a bed. “This is more than just a cold,” she told the parents. She got the child to a hospital where bilateral pneumonia was diagnosed. The girl received antibiotics and oxygen therapy and recovered completely.

The family had failed to recognize the seriousness of the respiratory illness of their child. For children who die of acute respiratory infections in developing countries, 85% die without having seen a physician or visiting a health center; the families simply do not recognize that the child is seriously ill.

Another health promoter was visiting a young couple with three children under five years of age. All three children had diarrhea. They usually had diarrhea, according to the mother. The promoter talked to the mother about preventing and managing diarrhea. She showed her how to use chlorine bleach in her one-room home to purify the water that she carried from the community waterhole.

The mother began using chlorine to treat their water. The diarrhea in the older children cleared-up; the baby was treated at the diocesan clinic. They all have been well since. Years of ill health were reversed virtually overnight for this family.

The major killers of little children in this neighborhood were diarrhea and dehydration, acute respiratory infections and vaccine-preventable diseases. After one year of the health promoter project, the number of children who had diarrhea every month decreased from 60% to 24%. The monthly respiratory illness rate dropped from 50% to 20% and the childhood vaccination rate rose from 18% to 91%.

And the neighborhood saw those good works, gave glory to God in heaven, and gave thanks for the social ministry programs of the Episcopal Church.

To learn more: Contact the Dohns at DohnsFamily@sams-usa.org or visit http://www.samsusa.org/missionaries_madohn.html

How to help: Click the donate link on the website.

-- Dr. Michael Dohn is a contributor to Interchange, the newspaper of the Diocese of Southern Ohio.

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