Helping others help themselves
In January of 2002, there was serious flooding in Indonesia, and Jakarta was under water for a solid month. When the water finally receded at the end of February, the village of Kapuk Murua, located at "the black heart of Jakarta" where the Kali Angke River reaches the sea, was at each high tide steeped in seawater heavily polluted with garbage and human waste.
At first the Indonesian Tzu Chi branch just entered the area to provide medical care and basic necessities. But when the water finally receded for good in March, there was a serious threat of epidemics of dengue fever and dysentery. So they mobilized people for thousands of man-days to undertake several large-scale cleanups of both banks of the Kali Angke River, clearing away as much as nearly one million tons of garbage in a day.
But the local Tzu Chi branch concluded that provision of additional medical care and basic necessities could only be stopgap measures, and that the only way to get to the root of the problem would be to eliminate illegal construction along the river and create flood control mechanisms. Therefore, Tzu Chi sought cooperation from the Indonesian government and began the enormous task of taming the Kali Angke River.
Tzu Chi Indonesia has taken responsibility for rehousing the people from Kapuk Murua. They acquired land from the government land development bureau to create "Tzu Chi Cengkarang Village," and are constructing 1100 new housing units there (known in Tzu Chi parlance as "great love houses"), built entirely using funds raised locally. The Indonesian government is deciding what illegal buildings along the river to tear down and is in charge of engineering work on the river.
"Self-help, local resources" is the aim at Tzu Chi. They believe that medical aid is not simply coming to the help of someone in pain, but should also inspire local people to bring their own compassion and kindness into play, so that even more people will contribute.
The advantage of youth
The Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation has its expertise in cranio-facial surgery, and Tzu Chi has the support of over ten million volunteers around the world. Two newcomer medical aid groups-the International Action and Cooperation Team (IACT) and the Taiwan International Medical Alliance (TIMA)-rely instead on youthful enthusiasm. Undaunted by the near impossibility of comparing with the outstanding accomplishments of their predecessors, they are serving people with academic medicine and medical matchmaking.
IACT was formed in December of 2001, and currently has nearly 60 members. Most are under-thirty professionals working in the fields of medicine, law, and accounting. IACT President Chen Hou-chuang says that the group was founded in response to the dramatic changes that have swept Taiwanese society in recent years.
"The shock of the 921 [September 21, 1999] earthquake on young people around 30 years of age is almost impossible to put into words," says Chen. People who had grown up with the economic and political miracles of the previous three decades learned trust and a belief that hard work would be rewarded, and thought only of moving ever higher and farther. But 921 caused many people to realize that amidst the seemingly endless demand for more that characterizes economic growth and democratic politics, there also remains a great deal of pain in this world. If in a wealthy country like Taiwan recovering from 921 is as difficult as it has been, they wondered, what must it be like in the developing world?
"The strengths of young people are their ability to learn and a driving curiosity to get to the bottom of things," says Chen. Before the founding of IACT, they sent several delegations to France to visit the Medicins sans Frontieres aid group, to study the attitudes needed for international medical assistance. They launched their effort in a spirit of "research," seeking to get to the root of problems of illness and public health in the developing world, in order to help train medical personnel in host countries and inculcate correct ideas about public health there.
1000 sandals
Currently the IACT has three action plans in progress, one in the African nation of Chad, one in Nepal, and one in a Tibetan refugee area in southern India. Because they have limited funds and experience, they have opted to take their first steps in cooperation with international medical aid projects. For example, the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides financial support for their participation in the AIDS research plan in Chad, where they are working with the French branch of CARE.
In the Chad project the IACT discovered that truck drivers passing through Chad, which is a crossroads nation in north-central Africa, relieve their boredom by patronizing roadside prostitutes, and AIDS thus spreads along the highway. The IACT has been working with Chadian health education groups to go along the highway and advise truck drivers in the use of condoms in order to block the further spread of the disease.
Research in a Tibetan refugee area in southern India has also proved highly instructive. In visiting the area, IACT members found that the Tibetans, accustomed to living in a cool, dry climate at high altitudes, still maintained some of their previous customs even after moving to southern India, and these created a higher incidence of transmission of disease. For example, after washing their clothes, Tibetans just lay them on the grass to dry. But in the hot climate of southern India, this makes it easy for ground-dwelling parasites to get into the clothing, so the IACT advised people to change the way they dry clothes.
Likewise, Tibetans normally go barefoot when weather permits, so those is southern India often did not wear shoes at all. "We gave them 1000 pairs of sandals that we bought locally," says Chen Hou-chaung. By getting to the root of epidemic diseases in the refugee areas, they could attack the problem at the core, rather than wasting medical resources in treating symptoms.
Another miracle
The TIMA, also founded in 2001, defines itself as a medical matchmaker. Huang Song-lih, a professor at the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at National Yang Ming University, says that many developing countries have Western medical teams stationed on their soil, but these groups are often short of resources. Taiwan is wealthy, and most TIMA members are high-income medical professionals with wide contacts, so TIMA feels that it is a more efficient division of labor to assist frontline providers to get the resources they need rather than going out in person.
Currently, TIMA is providing computers and software for a hospital serving refugees along the Thai-Burmese border. The computers were sent over early this year, and soon computer engineers from Taiwan will go to the hospitals to teach people how to use the new systems. In addition, the TIMA has introduced an American group doing antismoking work in Cambodia called ADRA to Taiwan's Teng's Foundation, which has been doing similar work to great effect for many years in Taiwan; Teng's Foundation will assist ADRA in the design of antismoking materials.
As more highly skilled professionals like Huang Song-lih participate in medical aid, it can be increasingly combined with scholarship and research. The Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps (TRMPC), which has done volunteer medical care on more than 100 occasions home and abroad (including in Asia, Africa, and the Americas), offers an example of this synergy.
"Although the pattern in international medical aid is to offer long-term aid at fixed locations, the TRMPC will at least for the near future continue its approach of not adopting any fixed location, but of doing volunteer care deep in those areas that local medical systems do not reach," says TRMPC President Liu Chi-chun. Like explorers on the Discovery Channel, the TRMPC's tramping through the developing world has yielded some valuable academic discoveries. For example, in Africa they noticed local people using wild plant leaves in place of quinine to treat malaria. Liu entered into cooperation with the graduate institute of biopharmacology at Taipei Medical University to study this plant. "If we succeed, then residents can just get their medicine from their locality, and no longer will face the problem of only being able to take quinine in limited amounts because it is so expensive on the international market," says Liu Chi-chun, adding that the arduous task of going to remote places to offer medical aid can be made much more rewarding and interesting if combined with academic research.
The TRMPC was founded by doctors who are also romantic adventurers at heart, the Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation is a manifestation of the missionary spirit, the ICDF fulfills Taiwan's responsibilities to the international community, the Tzu Chi International Medical Association extols the spirit of interfaith cooperation and self-help, IACT and TIMA are based on a rethinking of their world by young people.... But whatever their conscious motivations, perhaps their charitable instincts draw on an even longer tradition, one that has run through the blood of their fathers and brothers for centuries and millennia and is summed in the aphorism: "All men are brothers."
When one's brother is in trouble, no matter how far away, can there be any reason not to go and help? International medical aid is steadily expanding in Taiwan, but still this is just the beginning. Just like the miracles Taiwan has constructed in its economy and democratic political system, a new miracle of medical assistance is now being created.
Estimated spending on international medical aid by government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Taiwan (1995-2000)
Category
|
Public health, education, training |
Donations of equipment and supplies |
Humanitarian clinical care |
Total |
|
US dollars |
% |
US dollars |
% |
US dollars |
% |
US dollars |
% |
Government |
219,005 |
19.0 |
53,839,890 |
81.5 |
31,402,072 |
94.1 |
85,460,967 |
84.9 |
NGOs |
934,293 |
81.0 |
12,244,153 |
18.5 |
1,963,868 |
15.9 |
15,142,314 |
15.1 |
Total |
1,153,298 |
100.0 |
66,084,043 |
100.0 |
33,365,940 |
100.0 |
100,603,281 |
100.0 |
Source: Department of Health