Joseph & the Health Center
Joseph’s Story
The Paper Fig Foundation has a unique mission of empowering communities through fashion, and the sewing skills that young women gain and the runway shows members produce are evidence of its success. But if our partners in Eastern Africa aren’t healthy, what’s the point of all this empowerment?
“In thinking of a community in general, you really have to look at the community holistically,” said Paper Fig founder Laurie DeJong. “And we have hundreds of girls who have gone through our sewing school, and hundreds of women who have gone through our empowerment program, but we came to realize that the region where most of them live has no access at all to basic healthcare.”
That’s where the Paper Fig Foundation Health Center comes in.
Dr. Joseph treats people with malaria almost every day. This illness, which can be deadly, is completely treatable. But when people had to walk six miles to the nearest health facility, they were dying.
“Malaria in children is very dangerous,” explained Dr. Joseph. “It kills in minutes. So when someone gets to convulsion, it becomes very hard for a mother to carry that child to the town council or municipal council when the child is convulsing.”
In the health center, Dr. Joseph has the diagnostic tools to identify malaria, and he carries Coartem, which treats it. He administers the first pill in the office, and allows the patient to rest in the bed for a short while. Since the health center is currently designated as a Level 2 facility, the patient cannot stay overnight, and after a short rest, will be released with the rest of the medication to take at home.
Things have definitely improved for the thousands of people who live in the radius of the Marietta Steinberg Health Center. Instances of malaria have decreased, which our partners on the ground attribute to their educational programs and distribution of mosquito nets. Once a month, the doctor brings in outside services to offer vaccinations, and it’s always a busy day at the health center, with about 80 children getting vaccinated against the six most deadly diseases in the region.
Christopher, a preacher from the area, says that the health center has saved many lives. Before it was built, Christopher and his neighbors had a very difficult journey to a health facility.
“It was a long journey to walk,” he said. “Some 10 kilometers even. So you would walk, and then climb.”
Only in the most dire circumstances would people undertake the journey. When a woman was in labor, for instance, she would sometimes be carried by her neighbors the six miles. Now, people don’t have to wait for an emergency to seek out medical services.
“When I feel a little sick, I just come and pick up some medicine,” said Christopher. “So it is now easy to come here. We are feeling it here very well actually, and we praise God for that. It has helped many people, many, even beyond this municipal. So they have-- you have saved-- this health center has saved a lot of people.”
But Dr. Joseph will be the first to tell you that the need in this community is great, and there is much more to be done.
“If we could have a level three health center, we could admit patients and let them rest in bed,” he said. “We could administer medication and the patient could stay for three days, and go home when he’s already better.”
The symptoms of malaria are intense: vomiting and diarrhea, severe headaches, and sometimes convulsions. While the doctor waits to release patients until the symptoms have subsided slightly, he currently cannot keep them as long as would be ideal.
And malaria is just one of the many issues that brings people to the health center.
Word of the health center has traveled around the region, and Dr. Joseph regularly sees women in labor trekking up the steep hill to deliver their babies. As of now, he has to turn them away. The health center currently has an agreement with a Level 3 health center closer to town, and more than 50 women have come to the Marietta Steinberg health center and been transferred. Take Lucy, for example.
“Lucy came here with labor pains,” said Dr. Joseph. “I examined her using my fetoscope. From the stomach, I listened. The fetus was alive, it was okay, the position was good. But labor had started. I couldn’t deliver her here because we don’t have the tools, so I referred the mother to Kasese health center 3, and she delivered there.”
Sounds simple enough, but because of the remote location of the health center, ambulances do not come. Lucy rode on the back of a boda boda (motorcycle taxi), in labor, to town.
Often, labor happens at night, and boda bodas are not available.
“If it is at night, challenges come,” said Dr. Joseph. “You may find that the child has died at home. Maternal mortality increases; people have been losing lives. That’s why we need to build a maternity ward here, so that those deaths are reduced, so that more sufferings are reduced in the community.”
For a foundation focused on empowering women, a maternity center is a crucial step in the future.
“If our girls attending the school are not healthy,” said founder Laurie DeJong, “then what we’re doing, it’s not actually achieving a longer-term goal of a healthy sustainable community.”
Joseph is just about to complete his continuing education to become Head Nurse of the Paper Fig facility. This means he will be certified to deliver babies. But we need to build a facility, complete with electricity and running water, to be able to provide those services.
In addition to delivering babies, we want to do more to support all aspects of women’s health. That’s why we are working on offering a new master class for members of the
PFF Alumni Association, with curriculum produced by former Peace Corps volunteers. The program, RUMP, teaches girls and women how to make their own reusable sanitary pads. It also encourages conversations to remove the stigma around periods and menstruation.
“The health center is paramount to the mission of the Paper Fig Foundation,” said Edith Muhindo, PFF Area Supervisor. “Without health, we have nothing.”