Climate Action Indonesia Project #8690

Regenerating Rainforests

by Health in Harmony

Project Report | May 22, 2019
Our Ambulances and Mobile Clinics Save Lives - and Trees!

By Thomas Phillips | Development Officer

Our ambulance driver Pak Romi!

What if patients at our medical clinic need special equipment, intensive care, or other special services? When that happens, we speed the patient to a larger medical facility in the nearby city of Ketapang. Thanks to support from donors like you, we are able to provide this service to patients without unexpected fees or bills. That way, communities don't need to log in the rainforest -- or participate in the illegal timber trade -- to pay for an ambulance ride. In fact, many patients pay for these rides with seedlings or other supplies for our reforestation sites.

Medical transportation is one of the most significant barriers to treatment for rural communities in Borneo. That's why it's so important that our Indonesian partner orgization Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI) operates two ambulances. This small fleet represents the only realistic option for emergency transportation for the communities near Gunung Palung National Park. And because patients can pay for their ambulance ride with seedlings or other barter items, the ambulances are affordable for even the poorest families.

But transportation is not just a barrier to emergency care - for many patients, remote locations prevent them from accessing primary care as well. Diarrheal diseases, HIV, and polio are some of the most common causes of death in Indonesia. And all of these can be prevented through access to basic healthcare knowledge and services. That's why ASRI's monthly mobile clinics are an important complement to the two ambulances - since regular checkups help ensure that chronic, treatable disease don't become life threatening!

Each month, ASRI medical staff travel into the countryside to visit communities that would otherwise have little or no access to healthcare - in fact, some of these villages are more than 5 hours away. By bringing the doctor to them, the clinics offer another way to eliminate transportation as a barrier to care.

But these services don't just benefit patients. With the same vehicle that ASRI staff use to run mobile clinics, they also collect seedlings and supplies from patients around the community. Years from now, the seedlings that patients give us today will stand tall in the forst, helping mitigate climate change and also keeping the area less vulnerable to malaria and waterborne disease. In this way, we are helping humans and the ecosystem be healthier together!

Loading seedlings to be planted in the rainforest!

Back to all project reports

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.