Life-changing: my trip to Papua New Guinea with Vicks Road To Relief.

Mia Freedman Wednesday 11 August 2010 12:25pm

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With kids at mobile immunisation clinic

Well, I have a lot to tell you. A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in Papua New Guinea, a country I was only dimly aware of until recently.

You can see a gallery of photos from the trip here (taken by the extraordinary Conor Ashleigh who is only 22 and a photographic genius).

I went to PNG in my capacity as ambassador for Vicks’ Road To Relief program which works like this: you buy any Vicks product marked “road to relief” and your purchase will pay for one child in a developing country to be immunised against measles.

It’s that simple.

I will admit I was apprehensive about the idea of going on this trip. I don’t like to fly. I don’t like to travel. I don’t like to do new and adventurous things. And I’m a complete wuss-bag about children doing it tough or being in any kind of distress. I can’t bear even the thought of it and I turn into a puddle.

But that’s a totally pampered and privileged view. You can’t be an ostrich forever and I wanted to push out of my comfort zone and learn a thing or two about a country that is just a couple of hours from our own. It was an amazing few days. Amazing. I travelled there with Jolie from Vicks, Catriona from UNICEF (who are managing the distribution of the immunisations in PNG and other developing countries), photographer Conor and videographer Tara.

We were a tight team and we saw some wonderful and upsetting things together. Everyone who heard I was going to PNG raised their eyebrows into their hairline. “It’s sooo dangerous,” they exclaimed. “Be careful.” In Port Moresby, where we were staying, we had armed guards and weren’t allowed to leave our hotel. But on the first two days, we climbed into our mini bus and drove about 90 minutes out of Port Moresby to the province of Kwikila where we visited a health clinic, a mobile immunisation clinic and a school.

Here is a video overview of the trip and the Vicks Road To Relief program…..

And this is  a feature I wrote about our trip to the health clinic…..

Twins Lucy & Christina nearly died of pneumonia

Tiny twins Lucy and Christina were only eight weeks old when they started coughing. And they couldn’t stop. Quickly, they became sicker with high fevers and wheezing as they struggled to breathe. In the middle of the night, in their remote village with the nearest hospital almost two hours away, their parents were terrified and desperate.

Without ambulances or even transport, they were forced to wait until morning when they could send word to the local health clinic at Kwikila. A ute was immediately sent to fetch the girls and their mother Geue. The diagnosis was pneumonia and while Lucy was stabilised, Christina was transported to hospital in Port Moresby.

But this story turns out well. When I meet the girls seven months later, they’re all shy smiles and big brown eyes, peering at me curiously from their mother’s lap as they wait in the line to be immunised for measles. I’m in Saroakeina, a tiny remote village in Papua New Guinea as an ambassador for Vicks Road To Relief immunisation program.

Around 200 local babies and toddlers have been brought by their mothers to the mobile clinic for measles immunisations and it’s quite the sight. Clinic is a bit fancy a term for what it is: four nurses who brought the vaccines in cold eskies and set up a makeshift medical area under some trees. But there are no complaints. The mothers are grateful to be here because they know this immunisation could save their children’s lives. Pneumonia (as one of measles’ most common complications) kills almost 2 million children under 5 worldwide each year.

Christina and Lucy were lucky and their mother knows it, holding them close as they wait their turn. The atmosphere is relaxed and social with kids running around and the women chatting while they sit on the ground breastfeeding babies and trying to amuse nervous toddlers who have sussed out what’s going on and have begun to cry.

At the Kwikilia health centre

The older children happily play with rocks and sticks and each other and I think of the mountains of toys my own kids have. I’m glad I stole some before I left. The wide eyes when I hand out a knick-knack that came in a cereal box or a showbag breaks my heart a little bit. Earlier that morning, we’d been to the nearby Kwikila Health Centre whose name also belies the reality of the conditions.

Rhoda, the clinic sister who has worked there for 24 years, proudly gives me a tour. It doesn’t take long. Imagine a demountable classroom divided into three cramped rooms. The first is for admin, the second is for general patients and the third is the ‘labour ward’. In it, there are three old iron-frame beds, each with a thin stained mattress covered with a rubber mat. That’s it. When I ask about pain relief, Sister Rhoda thinks for a moment. “Oh, we have some Asprin”.

Most of the women waiting to have their children immunised gave birth in this small, dirty room. One woman has done it five times. I wonder if the Asprin helped. I flash back to last month when I had to take my 4 year old to hospital late one night. Having parked across the road, I sent whingey texts to my husband during the two hours we spent in the waiting room. We should be so lucky. Free, safe and available healthcare is a pipe dream for millions of people, even our neighbours.

Papua New Guinea is just a few hours from Australia and the living conditions for much of the country’s six million people are dire. 85% of the population live in isolated rural areas and poor sanitation leaves them terribly vulnerable to malnutrition and preventable diseases like measles and pneumonia. Nothing can prepare you for seeing this up close. And never again will I take the availability of immunizations and basic healthcare for my children for granted.

A child coming to be immunised

I’d gone to the supermarket before leaving for PNG and bought a whole lot of stickers and party blowers to hand out to some of the kids I met. They proved popular and I quickly ran out. Right at the end, before we left the village, I saw a little girl who had a terrible skin condition. Her clothes were rags and unlike some of the other kids, she didn’t have any little string bracelets or anything girly. I took off my scarf and wrapped it around her neck because I wanted her to have something to make her feel pretty.

(It’s lucky we left at that point because I was thisclose to taking off my watch….as it was I kept giving away my shoes. Some Witchery slip-ons at the hospital and my Converse to a street child outside the airport. I came home in clunky biker boots.)

The day after I wrote this, we went back to Saroakeina to visit the little school – which was actually just a few little huts with no desks or chairs let alone books and stationary. But the kids were all there in there school uniforms, beaming proudly. Some of the little ones were quite scared because they’d never seen white people before but mostly, they were just fascinated and excited to talk to us. Sitting on the ground, talking to the kids, I showed them some home movies on my iphone and immediately, a crowd of 30 kids had gathered around to watch.

Jolie played netball with some of the girls and Katrina and I played volleyball while Conor and Tara shot and played. One thing I noticed: these kids laughed so easily. Real belly laughs, loud and genuine. Western kids don’t do that very often. They’re jaded by comparison.

At Port Moresby hospital

The final day was the hardest. We went to visit the children’s ward in the Port Moresby hospital. By ward, I mean a very large room with small beds lined up a metre apart. The energy in that room was surprisingly peaceful. The parents just sat on the beds with their terribly sick children, sometimes other relatives or children slept or sat on the floor beside the bed.

This little girl had fluid on the brain.....

These kids mostly had meningitis, malaria, pneumonia, cancer and other critical illnesses. It was heart-breaking and I struggled to hold it together. I spoke to many of the parents sitting on the beds with their children and babies. They told me that the medical care was free for children up to age 7 but they had to buy food and drink for them, none of that was provided. It was very basic. No TVs. No Gameboys. No toys of any kind.

Had I not been to visit the kids in this hospital, I could have come away without the full picture of how desperate the conditions are for kids in developing countries like PNG. So please support the Vicks Road To Relief campaign.

Mostly though, I have been humbled. I am a pampered, privileged Australian who went to PNG for a few days in safe, clean and comparitively luxurious circumstances. The people I met are not so lucky and yet everyone I met was resoundingly positive, warm and welcoming.

Going to Papua New Guinea changed my life. Now please help me to change the lives of the children I met, and millions more like them.

WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW:

Please buy any Vicks product marked with ‘Road To Relief” and you will be providing one measles immunisation to a child like the ones I met in PNG. You can also become a Facebook friend for Vicks Road to Relief here.

Every friend will buy yet another immunisation. Just one click. Their lives might quite literally depend on it. And please tell all your FB friends to do the same….

PS: You can see the photos of the trip taken by Conor Ashleigh here (they’re amaaaaaazing).

And Conor has done a stunning slideshow of additional shots from the trip here.

Have you ever had a life-changing travel experience? Or maybe something you saw closer to home that changed the way you viewed the world or your own country?