Global voices: A Pacific Islander’s mission to bring contraception to women who’ve never had it

In the ‘Global Voices’ series, we share seven stories from MSI healthcare providers, leaders, clients and partners. Their reflections and experiences inform, inspire and invigorate–read them all in our latest Annual Review.

I’ll tell you about a typical month for me. It starts by identifying a district to travel to and coordinating the places my team will visit. Each month we can visit 20 or more different communities – we’re on the move constantly, day by day. We call the communities in advance to let them know when we’ll be visiting them with our reproductive health services. It causes quite a stir to know we’re coming!

So, now we have to travel there. That’s the biggest challenge. Oftentimes there’s no road access to reach the people who need us. Sometimes you’ll find us pushing our vehicle through mud and rivers. Other times we’ll leave the 4×4 at the road end, disembarking our equipment to trek into villages across mountainous terrain or wading through knee-deep water. We use boats and, on occasion, small planes. Landslides are frequent – we keep spades in our vehicles, using them and our hands to dig the rocks and blockages away so we can get through.

When we say outreach at MSI, we mean the most remote places you can imagine. Often no health facilities, no health staff in sight. Or if there is a health facility nearby, women can be scared to use the services there for fear of stigma, or the staff can lack the skills or equipment to provide family planning. I see rural communities at all angles – their joys and struggles. Many of the families have five or six children that they can’t afford to feed because they face many pregnancies, and some mothers suffer pregnancy complications like losing blood, haemorrhaging, and can go into shock and die.

The communities tell us, ‘You come here to solve our problems’, or ‘You are the only ones who come here’, and ‘Thank you for this service’. They say they can now space their children, have breaks. Community members take us in, prepare our meals, treat us as their family (of course there are no hotels in these remote places)! We enjoy meeting all these people who receive us with their hearts. We don’t forget these families.

For four years now with MSI, I have been proud to provide contraception. I have seen changes in these communities – people understanding the benefits of our services, children who have grown healthy and well. That’s what we are doing: creating healthy families. We are saving mothers from burying their children, and children from burying their mothers.

We provide all types of contraception and counselling on options. Our clients listen and decide what method will be suitable for them, and we respect their choice. We often support women but sometimes men decide to come. I remember one man who came forward and said, ‘I want to receive any family planning for a man’. He explained his wife had been through many complications birthing 11 children and he didn’t want to put any more burden on her. He had heard about us coming to a neighbouring village and walked two nights and three days to receive our services. He opted for a vasectomy and received it gratefully, telling us how it will help his family.

My team are on the road for about three out of every four weeks, away from our homes and families. There are four of us, three healthcare workers and a driver. We’re close friends as we spend most of our time together so have inevitably built strong bonds. We can lean on each other through thick and thin.

And at the end of each month, when all our community visits are done, we sit together and reflect on serving around 300 people with healthcare that will change their lives. We go through our successes and challenges, and plan how we will improve for the month ahead. And then we do it all over again… proudly.

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