Pa LA U village has 30 houses with almost 200 people who have limited medical care and education and very limited access to basics of life such as sufficient healthy food, clean water, electricity, toilets and waste disposal facilities.

The trip had several aims:
• Operate our field medical clinic to provide much needed medical care
• Continue with the village assessment to:
– Identify children who are not able to attend school because their family is too poor to send them
– Determine how best to support personal hygiene and environmental health capacity development
– Follow up on the seminar on mother and baby nutrition held last visit
• Pass on donations of clothes, educational items, and food to poor families

The volunteers met in Hua Hin at 7am on Saturday morning, loaded the donated clothes, food and medical supplies into a Songteaw and headed out to the village.

Our volunteers included two Doctors, Gerard and Oui, a nurse Paula and medical assistants Elmi, Aurelia and V. On the assessment team we had Keith the area manager, Chris from the Hua Hin events team and translator M.

Medical clinic
After arriving at the village we set up the main medical clinic where our medical team saw 18 patients. Thankfully there were no serious hospital referral cases this time but several patients were treated for conditions that will require follow-up. For example, one young mother with a heart condition, Pau Eh, was struggling to recover from a sterilisation operation and to provide adequate nutrition for herself and her three children given financial constraints. Although she was aware that condensed milk would not support the healthy growth of her 2-month old baby Siriwan, she was not able to provide breast milk or afford baby formula, so the baby was struggling to grow and had thrush. Jungle Aid provided urgently needed baby formula for the tiny baby and undertook to continue to sponsor the baby with formula for several months. We will follow up on the health of both mother and baby next time.

We also noted that the general health of the villagers is improving and they are increasingly asking about preventative healthcare. For example, how to remain healthy and how to avoid certain illnesses – such as intestinal and skin infections. We will increase our emphasis on this aspect in future and will deliver targeted ‘capacity development’ seminars in our clinics, covering nutrition, personal hygiene and environmental health. This will help villagers to stay well more of the time and take fewer days off work and school, which will benefit the villagers financially and help children to do better in school.

Village assessment
Once the medical clinic was underway, the assessment team began to collect information. We confirmed that inadequate access to clean water and lack of access to toilets were major issues for most families. We also determined that though most families are able to afford to send children to a local school until grade 6, some of the most vulnerable families do not send children to school for poverty related reasons. Additionally, some children want to stay on beyond grade 6 but the families cannot afford it. Jungle Aid aims for all children to have access to education so we will continue to work with families to identify such children and support the families to keep their children in school.

Food and clothes distribution
After the medical clinic we distributed the clothes, food and educational toys that had been kindly provided by our donors. The mothers and children in particular were excited and grateful to the donors for the items.

Jungle aid medical clinic

After an amazing day with the incredible volunteers we headed home.

If you are interested in joining us on a trip in future you can sign-up on the Jungle Aid ‘Meetup’ website at http://www.meetup.com/Jungle-Aid-a-humanitarian-aid-charity/. Just choose a trip on a date that you can come with us. You will see that places are limited so it is better to sign-up earlier.

We have many volunteer roles available – some require technical skills but others require mainly passion and enthusiasm.

If you have skills in the following or know someone who does, Jungle Aid would be very keen for that person to get involved:
• Health: Doctor, Nurse, Dentist, Nutritionist
• Environment: Water engineer, Sanitation expert
• Technology: Website design and maintenance
• Events: Events manager (Bangkok based)

Without your support we cannot offer the help that is needed….Thank-you for supporting the work we do…….

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