This film is part of “Innovations In: Health Equity,” an editorially independent special report that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
TRANSCRIPT
Jesse Irie: In Papua New Guinea, we have an estimate of more than 450 tribal clans and more than 850 individual local languages. The first, archeological finding up in Western Province found evidence of people living in Papua New Guinea 50,000 years ago.
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Crowd: [Singing]
Irie: My name is Jessie Irie. I am from the Eagle clan and, Cockatoo clan here in Papua New Guinea.
Esther Silas: My name is Esther Silas. I come from the Eastern Highlands.
Irie: “Touching the Untouchables,” in short, TTU, came from Esther. The “untouchables” are those communities where health services are not reaching them. These are the ones that continue to be left behind, and, and they’re dying.
Silas: When I first started work, it was in 2000. I worked as a nurse in one of the rural health facilities. And when conducting maternal and child health clinics from one village to another that’s when I saw the need of isolated communities–communities who had been left out from basic services.
So that’s when the idea came about to start an NGO that can bridge those gaps. And I decided I should come up with a program that should empower individuals to take ownership of their own health.
Irie: TTU was founded purposely to deliver the best health services to the people living in rural and disadvantaged communities of Papua New Guinea. The health services and the care that is needed in the communities can be done better, and we can do it better.
Irie (tape): We will give you your job descriptions. You will learn the terms of reference and you will learn the policies. But we are from here.
Irie: Touching the Untouchables, since its inception in 2009 until and now, we have worked in more than 2,000 to 2,500 tribal communities in Papua New Guinea.
Irie (tape): And really treat them the way that they should be treated. How will they respond to you? Yes? They respond positively. Let’s give you [a] tribute. Big claps after three. Two, three.
Group: [Claps]
Silas (tape): So now with our hands and feet and our whole body, we said “Together we can,” now.
Woman: Yes.
Silas (tape): So you’ll get the one, two, three.
Group: Together we can!
Silas (tape): Thank you!
Silas: We know the cultural beliefs and also the approaches that can change the community.
Irie: One of the beliefs is in sanguma–is in witchcraft, sorcery and poison men and poison women. They are used interchangeably.
Silas: Sorcery and sanguma beliefs deeply rooted in our cultural beliefs. So everyone, whoever’s family member dies or somebody else in the community dies of a disease or a sickness everyone still blames or says it’s an attack from a sanguma or a sorcery because of cultural beliefs, and only a few know that it’s because of the sickness or illness.
Crowd: [Singing and drumming]
Silas: Sanguma is directly related to gender based violence because in sanguma cases, most women have been accused. Most of the mothers and women in the community, their life is at risk when they have been accused because they knew that if anyone dies in the community, then they might lose their life. They might also die.
Silas (tape): You don’t need to get rid of the beliefs, but It depends on individuals, how they manage their, their beliefs.
If you want to change the community, you have to work with the leaders. And when—whatever the leaders say, the rest follows.
Silas (tape): This is…
Irie (tape): Kainantu village.
Silas (tape): Kainantu village. This is where we will be the whole day.
Crowd: [Singing]
Silas: There is a workshop approach that we use in the community and it’s called community led total sanitation. And it addresses all the preventable diseases and even the hygiene and sanitation facilities in the community.
Lope Pikuri (tape): Flytrap. [Speaks in Tok Pisin]
Silas: After the training to check the understanding, we ask participants for their feedback and most participants’ feedback is: “We can be able to prevent ourselves from getting sick rather than accusing sanguma and sorcerers, saying that we are dying because of the sanguma.”
Silas (tape): One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.
Crowd: [Talking and laughing]
Silas: Through the, the sessions the community realized that they can be able to prevent most of the diseases by creating simple things like hand washing stations, beautifying their place, and building drains in the community. So when they realize that they can do it themselves, it motivates them to take action.
Irie: For me, there was—there’s a—in my heart, there’s a cry for, for peace, for, for reconciliation, for someone to bring that lasting peace.
Silas: I have seen most communities who was involved in sorcery and sanguma accusations before we entered the community has changed.
Crowd: [Talking]
Silas (tape): This is a basket for the whole family and the mothers and the parents, for the family to go into the [oven].
Silas: We want everything to be–all the programs to be–bottom up and also top down [for the] community to take ownership of all the programs that we are delivering in the, in the community, and also make sure that it is also strengthened by the existing system, top down from the government down. We don’t see this happening in other organizations.
We believe in [Papua New Guinea] ways and we want to do it our way even though it is very difficult. The work that we did under this organization has saved a lot of lives, especially the mother and babies in the remote and isolated or underprivileged communities.
Kintanu Elder (tape): What the people are doing here is a model to the three villages. We have one village up there and we have another village down there, so this community will become a model village so the people can take it on from here. And we can all strive for a change in our own community. TTU—you showed your love for us.
Thank you for everything. We have seen your work. You have been doing a marvelous job around the village. Thank you very much for your coming here. So, TTU, we acknowledge you. Bless you. Thank you.
Silas: The communities in the districts that we have touched, they are doing something productive, and they are looking for ways that they can do something better for the community and for the country.
This film is part of “Innovations In: Health Equity,” an editorially independent special report that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
