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Public health volunteer program inaugurated

An Aboriginal community public health volunteer team that aims to take care of ailing Aboriginal elders using a combination of modern medical technology with traditional cures was officially inaugurated in Taipei yesterday.

The team consists of 188 volunteers, including 80 Aborigines and 123 members who have background in public health.

The 188 volunteers will be stationed in 15 Aboriginal communities around the country.

The program was initiated by Chen Mei-shia (陳美霞), a public health professor at National Chengkung University.

“I’ve been trying to help reform Taiwan’s public health system since it was harshly hit five years ago by SARS,” Chen told a news conference.

“During my research, I realized that minority groups are the most disadvantaged ones in our public health system,” she said.

This inspired her to make public health improvement in Aboriginal communities a major part of her campaign for reform.

However, instead of just bringing medical teams with modern equipment and the best medicine to Aboriginal communities, she wanted to put the “ancient wisdom that is passed on through generations” into the modern public health system.

Kazangnirang Muwakai, a nurse who has served at her hometown public health center in Laiyi Township (來義) for more than 20 years, agreed with Chen’s idea and signed up for the training.

She said she signed up for the Aboriginal community public health volunteer program that began earlier this year because she realized that modern medical technology could not meet all the medical needs, especially psychological ones, of the elderly in her native Paiwan community.

“Some elders in the village don’t feel better after taking medicine when they’re sick,” Muwakai said. “They only feel better after undergoing some rituals by the local shaman.”

Besides treatment by the local shaman, members of local communities use many other traditional cures, with some relying on expert knowledge of various herbs.

“It’s not enough to just record the health conditions of the elders. What’s more important is to take down what they have in their brains,” she said.

The volunteers often visit the elders in the communities. They talk to them and listen to them talk about how some sickness is traditionally cured or about anything that happened around where they live.

Aziman Istasipal, a Bunun volunteer, said that the program had brought some changes in his life, as he learned more about his own culture and history by talking with elders in the tribe.

One such change is that he used his Chinese name when he signed up for the training, but now he asks to be called by his Bunun name.

After the volunteers became more familiar with the elders and gained their trust, they started teaching them about public health concepts.

The program has been quite successful and Chen voiced hope that it would continue to grow in the future.
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