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Community Health Education |
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Community Health Education
Badakshan is the most north-easterly of Afghanistan’s provinces, and the Wakhan corridor, where ORA International is working, is the most north-easterly tip of this province, sticking out like a finger on the map of Afghanistan. This remote and mountainous area, with its valley floor at around 3000 meters above sea level, has been cut off from the rest of the country by its remoteness, war and the absence of a good road. There is some trade with surrounding countries and Afghan traders, but high prices are asked for necessary goods. Badakshan province produces a lot of opium. In Wakhan no opium is produced, but plenty is consumed. From the late 90s until 2001 ORA international had offered both residential and community-based drug rehabilitation services in the Wakhan.
It is hard to grow anything in the Wakhan. The soil is poor and the climate harsh with long, cold winters; temperatures go down to minus 25 Celsius in January.
The people, mainly farmers with crops and animals like goats, sheep and yaks, are very poor and live mainly on bread and salty tea, next to a bit of rice and some meat.
ORA International has again been working in the upper Wakhan since 2003 and is now based in Kipkut, in the middle of the upper Wakhan. Before we arrived, there were no medical facilities available in the upper part of the Wakhan. Until 2007, the team has been training 45 female community health workers in treating common diseases and illnesses and in how to perform clean deliveries. Further training is being given in weighing children and treating malnourishment. ORA has also started a vaccination programme for young children and women of child-bearing age, given by 2 local vaccinators, and antenatal care has been started up. Next to that a project for improving stoves for baking bread is going on, so that the smoke pollution within houses will become less and so the people will have less breathing problems.
Funding for this project comes from KNH and private donors.
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