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Saving lives in Papua New Guinea   
Aug. 25, 2008—Margaret Rombuk was raised in a missionary environment in a rural community in Papua New Guinea where her church—the Church of the Nazarene—addressed healthcare needs by setting up hospitals and a nursing college. This work inspired Margaret to train as a nurse and she has devoted herself to public health ever since. Margaret also has a commitment to helping people who don’t have the resources for such care. This commitment was fine-tuned after she moved with her husband to the capital city of Port Moresby and worked for three years in the private sector. “For private doctors,” said Margaret, “people had the money and could afford to go and sometimes you could see the women, the people who were suffering and really wanted to get the treatment, but they could not have access to it.” Through this experience, Margaret saw the need for access to health information. It was at that point, in 2003, that she joined forces with Susa Mamas Inc., a non-profit organization in Port Moresby whose “vision is to reduce maternal and infant morbidity and mortality by promoting mother and baby friendly practices through education.” Papua New Guinea has one of the highest infant and maternal death rates in the world, compounded by the fact that many women are illiterate. Thus, getting correct information to women is vital to saving lives. Women are very influenced by advertising, say Margaret, but they don’t always have the education they need to make informed decisions. Many women, for example, are introducing babies to solid foods at four months or younger, which is too early. The program at Susu Mama’s (which means “breastfeeding mothers” in the local language) is to help introduce women to proper breastfeeding practices and to the appropriate diets for babies. The organization also provides information on family planning and immunization.
The challenge for the organization now is to develop resources to both maintain operations in Port Moresby and to expand these critical services to more rural areas. Susu Mama’s wants to set up similar operations in the towns of Hagen and Lae, for example, which are dotted along the main highway from the highlands to the coast. As a newly-appointed clinical manager, Margaret will be traveling between these two centers and hopes eventually to run small clinics that are financially independent. Her dream is “to get the message to the rural people in the villages so they can have a healthier life. They don’t have access to the information that we give out to urban centers…. Our health system in our country is really poor so it’s something in my heart that I really want to educate them as much as I can.” To prepare her for the tasks ahead, Margaret says she learned a great deal from CEDPA’s Global Women in Management training program, which she joined in the summer of 2008 with support from the ExxonMobil Foundation’s Educating Women and Girls Initiative. “I’m in the field doing my job so everything I’m learning [here] is completely new—about project management, management skills, and strategic communication.” The latter has been particularly helpful because of her constant communication with mothers. “I’ve [also] learned a lot from women here who have come from different countries, organizations and backgrounds,” Margaret adds. “This has motivated me to … think of other ways to help women.” Margaret comments that some of these ways include thinking about the valuable work that women in Papua New Guinea can do in rural areas versus moving to urban centers, and about ways that the government can better support her organization.
Margaret certainly has a lot of her own personal support and cites a variety of mentors that cheer her on, including her three children, her elder sister, her supervisor, and a women’s group with the Church of the Nazarene, with which she remains very active. Her husband, she says, also gives her full support in what she wants to do. Margaret claims that men—especially in the cities—are becoming more educated and open to the advancement of women, but she says that many men still hold on to old ideas about women’s roles, maintaining an attitude that women should stay at home and not express opinions. She believes education is key to changing attitudes. For many women in Papua New Guinea, high rates of illiteracy, domestic violence and few opportunities to be in decision making positions remain barriers to their advancement. Margaret herself is a good example of someone who has broken the mold and who has helped thousands of women—and their babies—in the process. |
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