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The Preventative Health and Community Empowerment (PHACE) Programe
Papua New Guinea is ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world, with 40 percent of the population living below the poverty line. The country also records around 500 diagnosed cases of leprosy a year and thousands more go undiagnosed. Unfortunately, many persons affected by leprosy in PNG are also living below the poverty line.
Since 2022, The Preventative Health and Community Empowerment (PHACE) Programme has been working in partnership with targeted communities to establish collaborative relationships and identify Community Leaders and Village Health Volunteers in 45 communities in Papua New Guinea.
The comprehensive training programme for volunteers ensures that health knowledge is embedded at the community level. Learning, sharing and ownership of knowledge empowers community decision-making leading to transformative actions.
The training and intervention activities at the community level have resulted in a greater number of women taking leadership roles. The referral pathways established ensure that people affected by leprosy, vulnerable and marginalised people feel safe and included in their communities and there is an increasing number of suspected cases of leprosy being found through active case finding.
In 2023, 1,500 village health volunteers were trained in the PNG Health Department through the PHACE programme.
Through your support for PHACE, you are helping communities understand the importance of cleanliness.
You are providing them with the know-how to establish essential water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure. This means providing access to taps and toilets. Instead of relying on a few bush latrines or pit latrines for the whole village, the goal is to have a pit toilet for every household. This will significantly reduce the risk of contracting leprosy.
PHACE teaches communities the principles of improving their livelihoods. As incomes improve, households use their funds to build a toilet, buy a water tank to capture rain from their roof, and buy nutritious food.
This positive cycle is unravelling the knots in the net of leprosy that has trapped families for generations in an inescapable snare of multiple disadvantages.
The work you are supporting through PHACE is giving them the chance to escape their net forever.
THE MAIN GOALS OF PHACE PROGRAMME:
- To build knowledge that underpins community wellbeing
- To help local leaders embrace their responsibilities for improving health.
- To improve the links between small communities and the services/support that are available at a regional and national level.
- To help people in the target communities understand their rights to good health, and respectful treatment regardless of status or gender, and create opportunities for the empowerment of women and girls.
- To embed the principles of preventive health practices.
- To improve the knowledge and skills of the teams that deploy PHACE in communities, including health staff and volunteers.
- To establish partnership with health posts and build capacity of local health workers and volunteers in communities and build trust and mana towards them among their user bases.
- To indigenise PHACE systems and support so they align with the nature and priorities of the local community.
