Tibet journey spurs health care
Valley group travels to aid mothers and children
A nomad woman of Magrogongar County Tibet.
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By Tony Evans
For the Express
Medrogongar County on the Tibetan plateau bears a physical resemblance to Blaine County with its high mountain valleys, livestock and snow. Yet, the arid region is nearly 100 miles from the capitol of Lhasa and beyond the reach of modern health care practices.
In September, a group of Blaine County residents joined members of One HEART Foundation of Salt Lake City, travelling to Medrogongar in order to advance maternal health care practices in the region.
Barbi Reed, owner of the Anne Reed Gallery in Ketchum, photographed the journey, which included visiting rural clinics. Kelly Weston, of Native Landscapes in Hailey, explored the possibility of introducing protein-rich crops to villagers in the region who have seen rapid changes in diet and subsistence patterns in recent years.
One HEART?which stands for Health Education and Research in Tibet--is a nongovernmental organization, which was granted nonprofit status in January of this year and is affiliated with the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
One HEART director and president Arlene Samen is a nurse practitioner and midwife who directs the training of village midwives in Medrogongar as part of a regional effort to reduce infant mortality. Expecting mothers in the region suffer from problems ranging from dehydration, to lack of basic hygiene, to nutritional challenges. Traditional Tibetan folk ideas about birthing sometimes reduces the level of hygiene leading to one of the highest levels of infant mortality in Asia. Samen and others have joined Tibetan partners in organizing training programs for village midwives aimed at ensuring safe birthing techniques, and increased nutrition for mothers and children.
Samen?s efforts are funded in part by Ketchum residents like Ann Down, who first traveled to Tibet in 1999 on a trekking journey.
"I became inspired by the Tibetan people and felt a lot of angst about their situation," Down said.
Since that time, she has become a financial supporter of child welfare organizations in several Buddhist countries, including Tibet. Currently she is in the village of Dharmsala in northern India, home of the Dalai Lama, the exiled religious and secular leader of ethnic Tibetans.
In order to introduce protein-rich crops, Weston evaluated the subsistence patterns of Tibetans who are moving from an organic, barley-based diet to one rich in wheat and rice noodles grown by Chinese agricultural enterprises. Many of these villagers were previously semi-nomadic and are now in the process of establishing sustainable gardening practices that will provide the protein that they once acquired from livestock.
"I would like to see village gardens build on traditional organic practices with certain refinements, rather than see them become reliant on chemical-based agricultural systems," said Weston, who saw thousands of greenhouses constructed in Tibet for year-round agricultural practices.
"The growing season in Medrogongar is nearly the same as that of Bellevue, except that you will see corn and also watermelons," Weston said.
One HEART Foundation will present a showing of Barbi Reed?s photographs from Tibet as part of a fundraising evening in Ketchum in January. But there is also the immediate practical contribution she is providing to the midwives of Malgongar, laminated photographs for birth practice training manuals.
