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“I will remain here for as long as I can help out, two, three, four years, that’s alright with me,” – Staff Nurse Evivi Waqanisiga STAFF Nurse Evivi Waqanisiga knows the Nurses’ Prayer by heart – she has a hand-written copy of it pasted on her white-washed office wall in Tuvuca Nursing Station, in the Lau Group, separated to us by miles and miles of ocean. She also knows everyone in Tuvuca Island by name, age and occupation; their earning power and abilities to do things in an island milieu.
She even knows which one of the 14 children attending Tuvuca District School with a roll of 32; suffer from the island’s most pressing medical problem – skin diseases in the form of Dhani and Ringworm. She could also give you a detailed inventory of Tuvuca’s diminishing copra trade, how much a kilogramme of dried flesh fetches when the MV Tunatuki arrives from far-away Suva during a two-month interval and how much money the village headman (Turaga-ni-Koro), Tomasi Mateyawa, would earn from the fully packed copra bags down by the sandy beach in front of the village or how he would utilise the wealth when his pay packet arrives more than a month later. These are some of the most significant musings S/N Waqanisiga undertakes in Tuvuca, an island with only one village with a total population of 137 and 35 households, 37 families and three babies in the one-year-old age range. Cut off from everything we take for granted in the mainland, S/N Waqanisiga makes do with a Nursing Station that houses a well-defined stock of medicines Tuvuca certainly does not need because of its healthy status and a fridge that has an empty gas cylinder because it ran out ages ago. Her well-maintained nurses’ quarters and nursing station is a joint effort between herself and her young husband, who she said “is a great man”. He is also from Kadavu. When the Minister for Health, Women and Social Welfare, Dr Jiko Luveni, and her team arrived at Tuvuca on Wednesday night during a week-long Ministry Tour of the Lau Group, S/N Waqanisiga had already run out of kerosene for the cooking stove and much needed washing soap weeks before. Yet she summoned all the children in an orderly fashion at the beach to meet the Ministry’s School Health Team and called the assembly to order in no time. Yet she had spent her effort in 2007 conducting workshops on the dangers of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI), Adolescent Reproductive Health (ARH) and one of the Ministry of Health’s most critical programme, Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), public health interventions for children. Her main target is the young people of Tuvuca.
“Tuvuca has 27 young men in the 15 to 44 age bracket and 29 females,” she said during a Q & A Session with Dr Luveni and her senior officials inside the Nursing Station. “My other group includes nine males in the six to 14 age group and 14 females.” “There is no correct definition of “youth” in this village because all young people are referred to as “just another villager” as soon as he or she drops out of school,” she added. “They do all village tasks assigned by the elders and are treated as adults, simply because there are no programmes in place at village level to target youth here.” The observation became a catalyst for S/N Waqanisiga to start conducting her own youth forums in the village to get to know the young people better so that she could share their stories with the village elders during village meetings and also take those sentiments to her superiors, the Sub Divisional Medical Officer (SDMO) in Lomaloma, Vanua Balavu over an hour’s ride away by a fiber-glass built boat. “My challenges for this year will be to get into the church youth group (MYF) in Tuvuca and educate young people on STIs, HIV and other health issues significantly youth,” she said. “That would be the area which needs to be addressed.” “As you might have seen on my walls outside, our major problem here is water,” she told the Minister. “We have a multi-purpose pond where everyone bathes, washes and cleans in, drinks from and cooks food with – it would be extremely grand if someone does something about that!” “My water tanks (supplied by the Ministry) serves the community well and it’s okay, have to help them,” she says, smiling. Her statistics read that Tuvuca’s main source of income is dried copra fetching 18-cents a kilogramme. Her Non Communicable Disease (NCD) records state that there are three Diabetes cases, six Hypertension, three Hypertension and Diabetes, three Asthma cases, one person with Multiple Disability but nil mental cases. It’s been two years going for the seemingly good-hearted lass from Tawava in Kadavu and her assurance to Dr Luveni and her senior officials that she would ensure she completes what she has started made her “the ideal nurse in an ideal nursing station” as far as Ministry of Health core purposes go.
“Tuvuca is an ideal nursing station and the District Nurse is an ideal nurse, an officer who will show what the Ministry of Health is capable of when we serve the community,” said Dr Salanieta Saketa, General Manager Community Health and Acting Director for the Central/Eastern Health Services, which look after the Maritime Zone. “We pay tribute to Evivi for her abilities and in particular, for her exceptional skills and wonderful relationship with the local community,” Dr Saketa said. “She is the ideal nurse we headquarters staff are happy to know.” Despite her location and difficulties, S/N Waqanisiga, who received her education at Adi Cakobau School in Sawani in the early 90s, seems satisfied that she is doing what she is called to do and had a straight answer when Dr Luveni asked how long she would stay on Tuvuca, with the Ministry now trying to make things easier for rural staff by reducing postings to rural settings to two years. “I will remain here for as long as I can help out, two, three, four years, that’s alright with me”, she said. And for her dedication and sterling efforts, the District Nurse Tuvuca will be delivered four water tanks for her community in the next available boat to Tuvuca, funding for her health workshops for young people this year, two gas cylinders for her fridge to store vaccines and medicines and much-needed supplies. With the Nurses Prayer reminding her to be “strong, to face the day ahead, courageous as I approach a hurting bed, wise with every word I speak, patient as I comfort the sick and weak”, S/N Waqanisiga will bear on her shoulders a load for the Ministry of Health and do the best she can and what is right for Tuvuca. -ENDS- |
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