Medical

PPMK or Empowering Women to Fight Poverty officially started on the 12^th of September, 2009. PPMK had already been active in Bulus village by providing microcredit for the villagers in order to start or expand their small businesses. This is for assisting the economy of rural communities to grow by empowering especially women.

The Objectives of the Program

The purpose of this program is,

1) To give free medical service for poor people in Bulus village.

2) To obtain basic information on the health condition of the community so that the next-step program will be designed to be effective and on target.

Community profile

Bulus is one of the villages which lie in Kalurahan Sumberagung, sub-district of Bantul Jetis regency. Bulus consists of five RTs (the smallest unit of the district system in Indonesia). The target area of this program is RT 3 and RT 4, which are poorer part of Bulus. The total population of RT3 and RT 4 is 360.

The villagers here are construction workers, farmers, tailors, small business owners and housewives. And for the women who have a job, the average monthly wage ranges from 300,000 up to 500,000 IDR. (in USD around $30 to $50 )

Program Description

A. This program was implemented on May 20, 2010, from 09:00 until 12:00. PPMK selected 100 participants and distributed invitations to them before. And that day, 86 villagers came and got medical checkup, 63 females and 23 males.

B. There were two medical-support teams that joined this program to give medical service to villagers. One team consists of one doctor, two nurses and one pharmacist.

The medical checkup followed this process. One of the nurses helps villagers with registration and decides the order for getting the service. After registration, a villager comes to the second nurse to check blood pressure and fill out a form asking their personal information. And then the villager sees a doctor for consultation and a physical examination. Doctors prescribe a medicine to the patient and the patient gets it from the pharmacist.

C. The village community also participated in this program. Especially the women from PPMK loan groups assisted PPMK as volunteers. They helped in preparing the place for the program and provided food and drink.

Results and Findings of the Program

A. The most common diseases of the villagers were as follows.

Tunjukkan huruf latin

1. Headache caused by tension

2. Osteoartitis

3. Rheumatism

4. Fungal infections

5. Hypertension

6. Influenza

7. Asthma

8. Eczema

B. The doctors gave recommendations how to avoid or treat these diseases, which are applicable in villagers’ everyday life. And they emphasized that village people need more knowledge and education about healthcare.

C. Some villagers who came and got the medical checkup were so old that they could not answer when asked how old they were

And some villagers didn’t understand the meaning of blood pressure. There were two old men, and after checking their blood pressure, one of them suggested that he would give 30 from his blood pressure which reached 170 to the other, whose highest blood pressure was 120. This anecdote is one of examples which show that people's awareness of health and modern medical service is very low.

D. These results and findings will be used for designing the next-step medical & nutrition program of PPMK.

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