Aug 19, 2011

Done with the visits

It's been awhile since my last post. I won't deny that I had been so busy with a lot of things and one of which was visiting all 24 khoroos in Bayanzurkh District. Ideally, as soon as a new volunteer steps into any community, he/she must conduct a needs assessment by visiting all the Family Group of Practices (FGPs) in the first two months. An FGP is the usual barangay health center in the Philippines.

My visits took at least 5 months, just in time  before the new volunteer comes in.  So, with the help of my interpreter Altai and the FGP Manager Sugar (both in their stilettos braving the steppes for hours), I finished my visits and finally realized what's in "it" for me. And I tell you, I am in a massive "it"and massive is an understatement.

To start with, this district has approximately 290,000 "registered" people- not counting the families who have put up their gers a few minutes ago and the families who have left  to move to another district (modestly explaining their culture of moving in and out). And mind you only six of these FGPs are apartment khoroos while the rest are ger khoroos. The good thing is that here they have the freedom of putting up their ger anywhere they want unlike in Manila, where people living in the squatters would have to fear for their lives because of  demolition or a rushing train. Migration is a big problem as more and more people from the countryside move to the city to find a stable job- also a situation in my country.To resolve this gap, the khoroo government is trying its best to have everyone registered for the advantage of being able to access health services but the lack of manpower in the khoroo is crippling.

During my visits, I usually interview the heads of the FGP and they were all singing the same chorus. " Not much doctors or nurses for at least 10,000 people", "doctors and nurses are overworked", "doctors and nurses are underpaid", "In a day, one doctor sees 50 patients", and the song seems to never fade. It's incredible to know that I'm new in this community but very much familiar of the song they are singing because of what I witnessed while working with much, much smaller communities in the Philippines (probably 100 times much smaller).

One of the most obvious difference though is that Mongolians usually seek consultations for injections unlike us Filipinos who would rather swallow a month of irritating tablets just to avoid those injections.In almost 80% of my visits, I  witnessed seemingly healthy people coming into the clinic with a plastic bag of IV drips and 100% of those times, I would pester my interpreter to ask what the IV drips were for. But all the time, I would be in a glorious defeat because my interpreter was too courteous to ask. After twenty minutes of IV infusion, these seemingly healthy people will resume their seemingly normal lives and will leave the seemingly busy FGP- without a single tear. One time, I tried my best to look at the IV drips but as much as I tried transposing my left and right eyeballs , I could not understand the Mongolian scripted labels and so I stopped snooping around before I got caught.

I have to say that I am quite impressed with how their FGPs are completely endowed with children's playrooms, exercise equipments, digital scales, ultrasound and echocardiogram. But during my interviews, I had found out that they don't usually use these equipments because they don't have someone in the FGP knowledgeable on how to use it. Not only do they have not enough manpower in the FGPs, they also lack the "right" manpower.




And so after five months, I finally realized how big would be the ripples of my small actions. I admit that  the communities I had worked with before was just a fraction of this district's population. I know that I am not here to give them solutions on their big problems but then now I realized how important would be the implementation of our project.

Just in case you haven't heard from me for quite some time, don't worry, I'm just too busy with my small ripples. And oh yes I might be busy hanging out with my ex-lover:

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