December 2002 - Annette Culpan

Last Sunday night I went out for what I thought was a harmless meal. The next day I lost my appetite, could hardly drink and within 30 hours was passed out on the bathroom floor drenched with sweat. When John found me he initially thought I was dead. Just before the lights went out I too thought my time had come. It was one of the most terrifying nights of my life. I was high with fever and we immediately went to the international emergency centre where I was put on a drip for 7 hours & underwent numerous testing.

Prior to my falling ill, I had had another busy month, the first week spent developing a patient's database template with patient histories. Though it was initially time consuming and frustrating, there is huge value the understanding of key medical issues being faced in the villages - so we can plan for the coming year, identify high priority medicines and decide what referrals need to be made to specialist clinics.

It is no surprise that 7% of our patients suffer from leprosy, with many others not yet identified. As part of the World Health Organisation global elimination programme, antibiotics for leprosy should be readily available to us at no cost to the patient. Because of this, I have made researching this disease and the drugs available a big focus for December.

In the latter part of the month I visited a leprosy centre in Tabanan. I expected to find a busy clinic that could potentially partner with us in the Northeast. Instead I found a tiny village of four rehabilitated lepers, two of whom had lived on site for 50 years. After a long, expressive, involved discussion between the men we (finally!) obtained the contact details of what I am told is the sole organisation working in Bali to eliminate leprosy. Of course they are based in Denpasar not far from my home. A typical Bali experience of going round in one big circle to end up right back at the beginning.

The cargo project has continued this month sorting paperwork and leveraging relationships with Jakarta authorities in an attempt to clear the antibiotics, which have been held up in customs for over four months. More importantly, we're getting a clear picture of the process that needs to happen in the future to successfully import into the country. It appears to be a straight forward formula made up one-part part common sense & paperwork, the other part relationships and bribery.

A milestone last week was having the web content approved. A culmination of months of work, with input from many parties, it's a great feeling to move forward with this. Another positive is how we're tracking financially and the growth of our supporter base over the last 10 months. Our revenue is sitting at 330% on that for the entire previous financial year and our supporter base has grown 600%.

It's hard to believe that the year is drawing to a close. Only two months left on this journey with the beautiful people of this island paradise. Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for your amazing support in 2003.

Annette

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