Medical Students as Health and Environmental Promoters

by Salma Galal, M.D.

Model for "medical student as health and environmental promoters"

Health and environmental promoters or community health developer are either from outside or inside the community. A medical student from the community has the advantage of being a member of the working team and of the community at the same time. She/he is the best link between both sides. Being part of the community and available to be asked and to respond, this fortifies them in their domain as health leaders. A general community meeting is better to be held to eliminate wrong rumors and to clarify intended action.

Health is seldomly found to be first priority in a rural community. Often the first priority has something to do with their means of living like irrigation, agricultural problems, land ownership or housing condition, tranportation into urban areas. Water and sanitation are common problems for all. It has been found that diseases are often tolerated as long as they are not acute and cured with home remedies. During examination tours done in some of the villages, children and adults were found to have malunion of fractions, meaning that they indured even fractures.

Fig.2. The relations between community health promoter and other institutions (Galal,1992)

Student/community health and environmental promoters often found that health education alone is not enough, they had to try to improve other conditions to make it possible for the recipient to follow the messages. A student once said:

" I thought, I was doing only health education but I found out that to be effective, I had to solve with the pupils other problems they face".

Another one realized that abiding to the personal hygiene messages was difficult because of social environment; she had to find, for the primary school children, support from the Social Affair Office in order to have them follow her instruction. Often people don’t know about the possibilities they have to help themselves out in some situations.

The students evaluated their work in doing some laboratory investigations for the primary school children. They needed to contact the health units or even the director general of the dictrict to get their permission. In certain cases when they could not find health visitors in their area they made official requests to get them. Often, the director of school had to obtain the permit of the Education Department at the district to have them carry out the health education in the school.

In one of the villages, mothers got interested in getting themselves health education from the students after having heard from their children about it, the student organized with them an environmental sanitation action and the village was awarded for their cleanliness from governmental visitors.

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