Some minor comments to consider

Posted by Wonderboyz on December 02, 2003 at 17:26:49:

In Reply to: The Social Impacts of Roads in Rural Sarawak: A case of Layar, Padawan and Krokong posted by YB Golong on November 21, 2003 at 22:12:36:

Hello there YB;

Thank you for your wonderful posting. I give my short comment in a while. But first, thank you for your Miri stuff. Unfortunately, something wasn,t quite working (I think!), cos, it did not run smoothly (jumpy, very very blur pictures), then computer crash (i.e. simply blank, nothing happening... forcing a reboot...that is to say, I have to take off my cowboy boot, then put them back again... ehehhhheee). Anyway, I delete it, fearing that, for some reason, my anti-virus software may have detected some incompatibility. TQ anyway!

Regarding your posting here are my comments:

With respect to "Health" the article stated "In all three study areas the provision of a road did not result in an increase in the provision of medical services to the villages, but it did provide improved access to existing facilities which, particularly in emergencies, could save lives."

From my experience with the Medical Department, the general strategy is NOT to "increase the provision of medical services to the villages, or for that matter, to a town, cities etc"...rather, it is towards providing improved access to existing health facilities! This makes sense, because, it is financially draining the country's economy if each villages was provided with medical facilities. So the article is correct is saying that roads provide improved access to health facilities!

The article stated "Households in both the Padawan and Krokong areas were asked if they made greater use of specialized health care facilities such as hospitals and doctors since the road was built". For additional data, questionairre should be supported with data obtained from children under seven card, where every visit to clinics etc is carefully documented. Generally, one would accept the finding that the villagers would have made greater use of health care facilities over the years.

The article stated "In the Padawan area, only five respondents did not reply in the affirmative. In the Krokong area, the affirmative response was slightly lower, but even at Gumbang where it was the lowest, 58% of respondents still replied in the affirmative." It would be interesting to find out if those who replied in the negative belong to the "old-age group" or a mixture of old-bidayuh, modern Bidayuh and Bidayuh Bauh! I suspect the older Bidayuh (i.e >65y) may be less willing to go to clinics and hospital for chronic illnesses (i.e kurap, dental carries, arthritis, diabetes etc).

Regarding "Women's Health" the article stated "Women were strongly encouraged by government health workers not to give birth at home; traditional midwives were discredited and sometimes even given incentives (e.g., sarongs) to discontinue their practice".
It is in accordance with WHO recommendation that mothers are encouraged to give birth, in the presence of qualified midwives in properly equiped health facilities to ensure minimal mother and child mortality rate. Traditional midwives (or Bidans) were NOT DISCREDICTED, but rather, their past services were acknowledged, however, the trained midwives are better capable of handling childbirth with proper standard of hygiene etc. Thus as the artricle stated "This made access to a birthing clinic or hospital of primary importance".

As stated in the article, in Gumbang, "three out 13 women had given birth in the forest before managing to reach the birthing clinic at Krokong".
This is NOT the desire outcome, BUT, it is a fact that some babies could not wait for their estimated arrival time to come out screaming to the world "I am a champion!" as Dr. F. Kiong tells us.
Be that as it may, the baby is definately better off, being taken care off by the midwives than by the Bidans. This is not to look down on the bidans, for our ancestors were all delivered by bidans long time ago.

Yep, I think I stop here