Tuberculosis Day

AMSA UPH's Tuberculosis Day 2012

  

Last month, on the 31^st March 2012, we AMSA held an event in recognition of World Tuberculosis Day or TB Day for short. TB Day originally falls on the 24^th March worldwide, each year. But because of this and that, we decided to held our event a week later.

This TB Day is designed to build public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis and efforts to eliminate the disease. Today tuberculosis causes the deaths of about 1.7 million people each year, mostly in the Third World (Wikipedia).In Indonesia alone, there are at least half a million new cases of TB per year and 175,000 deaths. Tuberculosis is the second killer of adults after cardiovascular disease and the most important killer out of all the communicable diseases.Indonesia made it into the list of 22 high-burden tuberculosis (TB) countries in the world, and ranks third. So this is why it is important for us as future doctors to take part in the tuberculosis day.

After a long, long, long, very long search, we decided to go to a Puskesmas Balaraja. We planned to give a seminar on tuberculosis to the people around there and give some souvenirs as well. And that’s exactly what we did.

When we got to the Puskesmas, it’s quite embarrassing that some people were already there waiting for us. But to be honest, we told them the program will start at 9, and at 8 many were already there. Maybe, they were just so excited about us coming and that’s really good. So when we got there, we got excited as well. There were around 30 participants at our seminar, not including kids, and most of them were women.

Raden Annisa Citra Permadi ( Icha ) and Desak Ketut Nariswari Pramegia (Gia), became both the MCs and the speakers for our program. We showed the people in the Puskesmas a video about tuberculosis awareness, which is a courtesy of YouTube (I’ll post the link below if just in case anyone wanted to watch the video too), and we explained to them about tuberculosis, what it is and how to identify it. Then we held a Q&A session. They asked us anything they wanted to know about tuberculosis, and us, with the help of the head doctor in the Balaraja Puskesmas, dr. Ronny, answered the best we could. They were really enthusiastic. Afterwards we held a mini quiz about what they just heard on tuberculosis. And whoever could answer gets a free TB Day calendar, which got the ladies really excited. It feels really good seeing how full of participation spirit the people had, it’s an indication that our program was quite a success. It pleases all of us. In the middle of the seminar, and the Q&As we gave them snacks to eat so that they don’t get too hungry. Then just before the program’s about to end, we hand out souvenirs, biscuits and hand sanitizers.

So overall I could say that our TB Day program was a success. Really grateful that we could take part in TB Day, and meet so many wonderful, enthusiastic people like the ones in Balaraja. May more and more become aware of tuberculosis!

Link to the video of TB awareness and educational video for remote villages with no local health centre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3WdF2cjdWg 

-VIVA AMSA UPH-