Iowa native Doctor Dan Murphy has volunteered in the Southeast Asian country of East Timor since September 1998. Since that time, he has seen over 175,000 patients in the Bairo Pite clinic in Dili, East Timor, and the clinic has become an important part of the health delivery system in the new nation. Health care services were extremely limited during the 24 year-long Indonesian military occupation of East Timor, which ended after the people voted overwhelmingly for independence in August 1999.
Dr. Murphy started working in East Timor during the Indonesian occupation, and was deported and blacklisted by the Indonesian government in early 1999. Murphy returned to East Timor in September 1999 to treat patients in a partially destroyed building even as the Indonesian military carried out their post-ballot destruction of the country.
Primary health care is a top priority for the clinic, which sees upwards of 600 patients seen a day. Services provided by the Bairo Pite Clinic include:
There are now more than 1,000 patients registered in the TB program, which includes treatment, education, and follow-up care. Beds at the clinic are reserved for those TB cases too sick for outpatient treatment or for those coming from distant areas. Twenty additional beds for longer-term TB treatment are located at Sister Lourdes’ Kolohun site, which is visited by Bairo Pite staff twice a week.
Four beds are devoted to maternity services at the clinic, which averages 60 deliveries per month. Dr. Murphy hopes to enlarge this area of the clinic and improve water quality to reduce the chance of infection for mother and newborn. Due to its maternal care commitment, Bairo Pite clinic has been chosen to participate in a national midwife training program beginning in May 2001.
Ten in-patient beds are used primarily for less common but dangerous diseases, such as malaria, gastroenteritis, and pneumonia.
Dental care is now limited to extractions but will soon expand to restorative work and training as part of an Australian overseas aid project.
Vaccinations for DPT, measles, polio at a minimum (UNICEF standard) are given at the clinic two days a week.
The clinic participates in many mobile clinics in the remote and often-neglected mountainous areas, and receives patients from all over the country. Dr. Murphy is working to develop a program of health promotion and prevention with links to mountain villages, with the Bairo Pite Clinic serving as the training site for village health workers.However, more funding is needed to make this program a reality.
Dr. Murphy has been working with 10 Timorese medical students who began their studies in Indonesia. They are unable to return to their former schools to finish their education. Five students have been able to resume studying overseas, and Dr. Murphy is assisting the others in their attempts to attend Western medical schools. Nursing students from LaHane, East Timor also rotate through Bairo Pite clinic as part of their training in practical skills.
In addition, the Bairo Pite Clinic has one of the best laboratories in Dili, offering basic hematology, urine, stool, and some chemistries; a general clinical and a TB ward; an adequate pharmacy, with most needed medications available; a kitchen; laundry facilities; water supply system; and a power generator. A computer center is being planned that will provide medical information and training to health care workers and others interested in medical topics.The center will be used to keep staff updated on advancements in medical knowledge through Internet links to medical libraries in Australia and the US. Clinic staff also assists with local radio and TV programming on health issues as part of their public education efforts.
The Bairo Pite staff currently numbers thirty people and services are available to all, regardless of ability to pay, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The monthly clinic budget is approximately $6,000 US and rising. Funding from the District Health Services in East Timor, which has substantially funded the clinic in the past, has recently been halted, leaving the clinic in a perilous position. Any assistance is greatly needed and appreciated.
East Timor Action Network
1202 Williamson Street
Madison, WI 53703
He has spent most of the last three years in East Timor. MAET, with the UW International Health Exchange, and the UW Office of International Health, co-sponsored Dr. Murphy's Madison visit and lecture in the S.M.I. auditorium on August 30th 2000, and more recently at UW Hospital and Clinic on June 12th and 13th, 2001.
MAET recently premiered its Madison produced video "East Timor's Health Undone" which covers the day to day work of Dr. Dan Murphy, treating and diagnosing the poor, ill, infirm and abused of East Timor, under the most difficult conditions and unspeakable disease problems, such as the prevalence of malaria, tuberculosis and other preventable diseases, aggravated by the wounds of militia violence, and the homelessness and malnutrition such violence produced.
Copies of this video are available. For more information please contact elliotstokes@hotmail.com.
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