solutions to avoid diarrhea disease
The choice of proposed study start with the serious concern on the high number of diarrhea disease which have occurred on the recent 10 years in Ende District, Nusa Tenggara Timur. There are three main factors that influence the high number of diarrhea case. Firstly, Local people behavior. Open defecation which happened along Ende's beach area has become people's habit and it became the main cause of Diarrhea case in Ende. Evidentially, Diarrhea was reported as an outbreak in 2008 which killed 9 children in Ende Island.
Secondly, short term projects. Almost 10 Years, the government and NGOs have spent a lot of money to tackle issue related to diarrhea disease by addressing some projects. Although, the projects had given some benefits for the community, it had just run for one or two years. As the result, the majority of local people just concentrate about how much money would be spent to run these projects and they became unaware about their health and the importance of the projects. Additionally, when the projects had finished, the trend of diarrhea disease remained stable. It means that the short time project is unsuitable solution to decrease the number of diarrhea case.
Thirdly, overload tasks of the health workers. Ende district has more than 100 isolated villages which are far from the health service facilities and other public services. The unequal numbers between health workers particularly epidemiologist with those areas has become challenge in combating diarrhea disease comprehensively. Consequently, the health workers are unable to cover whole of those villages in doing activities related to disease preventive and surveillance monitoring. The trained epidemiology surveillance team with involving the local people is highly recommended to help the health workers in order to tackle diarrhea disease.
The University of Western Australia is one of the world top 100 universities, provides a proper approach in Master Program, especially for the health workers who work directly in the community field. Based on the information that I have found at Western Australia's website, Western University also offered two subjects which appropriate for the health workers such as epidemiology surveillance and epidemiology for infectious diseases. Moreover, University of Western Australia also has professional lectures which work familiarly in researches related to epidemiology. I strongly believe that by taking Master of Public Health in University of Western Australia, I can offer some solutions in order to avoid diarrhea disease in Ende, Nusa Tenggara Timur.
