Earlier this year, Leprosy Mission New Zealand Programme Manager Matt Halsey visited our project in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, to make a very special delivery.

Since 2006, the Leprosy Mission New Zealand has been supporting the development of a successful community health programme in Bougainville.  The project is helping to establish health care programmes in local communities so that families can take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing.  To date, programmes have been established in five of Bougainville's 13 districts.

Six district facilitators regularly travel to remote villages where they train and monitor village health volunteers, who are then responsible for providing health education in their communities. Volunteers raise awareness about diseases such as leprosy, identify villagers who are ill, and refer people to district health clinics for diagnosis and treatment. Since the project began more than 746 village health volunteers have been trained - 628 of them are now active in their communities.

"Leprosy is still an issue in Bougainville and it is very important that communities are aware of its causes and consequences", says Matt. "Through the community health programme we are educating families about the signs and symptoms of the disease, and making sure they know where to go to get treatment and support."

But as the project has expanded, travelling to the villages has become a major challenge for the district facilitators. Bougainville is mountainous with dense forests, volcanoes, rivers, waterfalls and impenetrable valleys. Roads are extremely poor or non-existent, public transport is very limited and often the facilitators spend large amounts of their day walking from village to village.

To help overcome this problem, the Leprosy Mission New Zealand provided funding for mountain bikes for the district facilitators, and Matt delivered the first three in February this year. He has been amazed at the difference they have made. District facilitators are now able to travel quickly and easily between villages, leaving them with more time to train and monitor the health volunteers.

The Healthy Communities Programme will be implemented in all 13 districts of Bougainville by the end of 2014, and will be progressively taken over by the government's health department.

A group of village health volunteers outside a BHCP training session