VPHCS implements project on psychosocial servicesfor Typhoon Yolanda survivors

The Visayas Primary Health Care Services is currently implementing a project for survivors of Typhoon Yolanda in four barangays in Cebu.

The 15-month project, “Community – Led Disaster Preparedness and Resiliency: Grassroots’ Alternative in the Face of Climate Change,” is implemented in Barangays Tindog and Dalingding Sur, Municipality of Medellin, Barangays Paypay and Dalingding Norte, Municipality of Daanbantayan. The project proponent is the Philippine Network of Food Security Programmes, Inc. (PNFSP). It is funded by the Terre des Hommes International Federation (TDH). 

Psychologist Gilbert Carredo conducts a psychosocial session 

with Typhoon Yolanda survivors.

Aside from the four Cebu barangays, the said project is also implemented in four barangays in the municipality of Burauen in the province of Leyte which also suffered gravely from Typhoon Yolanda. 

Together with the VPHCS as co-implementors are the Eastern Visayas Rural Assistance Program (EVRAP) based in Palo, Leyte, the Women’s Resource Center of the Visayas (WRCV) based in Cebu City, and the Advocates for Community Health Inc. (ACH) based in Manila. 

Volunteer Melody  Geolin in a play therapy with children.

The project aims to ensure that the eight barangays have fully recovered from the main impacts of the typhoon, restored their livelihood and established safety and disaster prevention, response and recovery mechanisms and achieved their basic rights to food for their children and families through livelihood assistance and food security alternatives. 

Specifically in the four Cebu barangays, the VPHCS shall conduct psychosocial sessions for selected adults and children with unresolved trauma so that they can regain their usual work routine and pre-disaster psychological disposition. 

A play therapy with young people in Paypay, Daanbantayan.

Volunteer nurse Tardy Guardiario explains about 

disaster preparedness to residents in Dalingding Sur, Medellin.

The VPHCS shall also conduct trainings for local health workers in the four barangays on health disaster preparedness and mental health, and trainings on psychosocial processing facilitation so that they will be equipped to facilitate basic psycho-social processing for adults and children and undertake community activities on health disaster preparedness, especially on awareness -raising on the health effects of disasters and activities to build individual and collective coping strategies.

These four barangays have established people’s organizations which were organized by the WRCV as an offshoot of the relief efforts immediately after the typhoon. 

Medical care and psychosocial services for survivors of Typhoon Yolanda in Northern Cebu

The Visayas Primary Health Care Services, Inc. (VPHCS) recently conducted two medical and psychosocial support services missions in two municipalities in Cebu which were affected by Typhoon Yolanda, 

The missions were conducted in Barangay Batirya, municipality of Daanbantayan approximately 147 kms. at the northern most tip of Cebu on Feb. 1, 2013 and Barangay San Agustin in the municipality of Madridejos in the island of Bantayan which lies to the west of the northern tip of Cebu. 

Patients in Batirya.

 Patients in Batirya have their blood pressure 

taken before medical check-up.

Being located in the northern part of Cebu made them suffer from the wrath of Typhoon Yolanda last November 8, 2013, with many of the houses damaged or toppled down and people rendered homeless and fields of crops and fishing boats destroyed. 

The missions were supported by funds raised by Gary W. King, Ph.D., a philanthropist based in Minnesota who is supporting the Philippine Scholars Foundation which has a college scholarship for indigent families in Cebu City. 

Volunteer medical doctors treated 

more than 250 patients in Batirya.

 When the medical and psychosocial team arrived there three months from the tragic calamity, many of the houses had already been repaired and rebuilt from relief support donated by non-government organizations here and abroad as well as the local government units. However, there were still many families who were still unable to rebuild their houses and had to live with other families. 

Nearly 600 residents in the two communities were given medical services by our medical team of eight doctors. The medical cases included upper respiratory tract infections, tension headache, tuberculosis, hypertension, skin infections, peptic ulcer disease, anemia, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, and muscle fatigue. All of these diseases were adequately managed in the medical mission with the medicines that were brought by the team. 

More than 200 patients were seen 

in the medical mission in San Agustin.

Several adults also were also seen by the psychosocial team of psychologists and trained counsellors for problems of nervousness, difficulty in sleeping, headaches, irritability and other psychosocial problems which were felt in the aftermath of the typhoon. The psychosocial intervention consisted of stress debriefing through group therapy. Here, the therapists facilitated the survivors to express their experiences and their feelings and how these affected them and to draw out their coping mechanisms. At the end of the sessions, the facilitators identified those who really needed psychosocial and psychiatric treatment which will be done in a follow up mission. 

VPHCS volunteers take the blood pressure 

of patients in San Agustin.

There were also psychosocial activities for children which comprised of play therapy wherein the facilitators engaged the children in play in order to draw out their feelings of fear and anger. The facilitators then processed the emotions expressed during the play. Other activities included art therapy where the children expressed their feelings through drawings after which the facilitators processed the projections of the children. A total of 150 children were beneficiaries in the activities.

Children had play and art therapy.

Aside from eight doctors and eight psychologists and counselors, the volunteers in the medical and psychosocial services included six VPHCS staff and eight regular VPHCS volunteers of nurses, nursing students and community health workers. A total of 30 persons comprised the team. The missions were also held in partnership with the Women’s Resource Center of Visayas, Inc. (WRCV) which has organized women’s organization in the two areas and provided relief and rehabilitation services for survivors of the typhoon. 

Reflection of the psychosocial missions

Generally, the residents expressed their gratitude and joy with the medical and psychosocial activities. The people in both communities really showed the spirit of cooperation, and were very open in expressing their problems, fears and hopes. 

 A pose of the medical and psychosocial team.

For us in the VPHCS, together with our volunteers, we continue to be overwhelmed whenever we recall the experiences that we shared with the farmers and fisherfolks in the two barangays. They are simple, hard-working toilers of the land and fishers of the seas who have simple needs and yet are contented with their lives. We derive inspiration from their toils and their struggles as we reaffirm the values of painstaking work. At the same time, we also recognize the omnipotence and might of the Creator. Being with the children also gave us a sense of joy as they displayed the traits of being simple, truthful and candid. 

 A pose of the team with the local residents in San Agustin.

The people in the northern towns of Cebu indeed have suffered from the disaster that was Typhoon Yolanda and other calamities in the past but they have emerged triumphant and stronger in will and spirit, an indomitable resilience which many of us in the city may not have. We have much to learn from them, indeed. 

Glaring statistics prove need for urgently passing RH bill

By Janess Ann J. Ellao
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – The House of Representatives and the Senate is set to take a recess this week for the Holy Week break. Sessions will resume on May 7. There are speculations that if the impeachment process has been completed by then, the Congress will finally vote on the controversial Reproductive Health Bill.

In a press conference in Quezon City, authors of the Reproductive Health Bill in the Lower House, together with advocates, call on the Congress to pave the way for the “passage of the decade long, pending Reproductive Health bill and make it see the light of day,” the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation, Inc. said in a statement.

“Women and children are dying unnecessarily with President Benigno S. Aquino III’s failure to deliver much needed health care services to women,” Gabriela Rep. Luz Ilagan said, “Hemorrhage, eclampsia and sepsis infections are easily preventable causes of maternal and infant deaths yet Filipinos continue to suffer and die of these everyday because facilities are inadequate and there are no skilled healthcare professionals for childbirth.”

In January 2012 alone, the Department of Health has documented 50 incidents of maternal deaths in Metro Manila. On March 19, 2012, two new incidents of abandoned babies in Quezon City and in Davao were reported.

In a Philippine Star report, Roddie Santiago, a village officer, said the mother of the newborn baby found in Quezon City probably intended her baby to live because the mother tied it in such a way that you would not mistake it for trash. “The problem is she might not have the sufficient resources to support the needs of the newborn, forcing her to abandon the baby,” the report read.


(Photo by Anne Marxze D. Umil/Bulatlat.com)

“What could be more glaring than that? Clearly, we have a problem in reproductive health concerns of mothers, young people, among poor couples particularly,” Ramon San Pascual, executive director of the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation Inc.

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