Hello HIFA-Community
My wish: let us share health-skills!
Knowledge is good, but it does not automatically transform into action. What is needed in everydays health work are skills. Fred Abbatt, co-author of "Teaching Health-care Workers", distinguishes manual, communication and decision-making skills.
There was, 30 years ago, the initiative "Facts for Life", still going strong. Now let us launch "Skills for Life"! In health promotion, prevention, cure and care. Let us empower ourselves and others to gain better physical, mental, spiritual and social health.
In Health Promotion an example of such a life-skill would be: planting and caring for a lemon-tree. It will provide the family with vitamin C for years. In prevention, just one example, there could be hundred other examples: How to dry up stagnant water, and thus eliminate breading places for anopheles. In curative work: The millions of practitioners around the globe might have each a little trick, a special skill, they would be ready to share with their colleagues.
I have initiated a health programm which essentially teaches one skill: self-observation of cervical mucus. Our female trainers go to the villages and meet learners in groups and individually. Women learn how to recognize the fertile days in their menstrual cycle.
Our "Desired Motherhood"-programm is not about knowing the reproductive organs, not about strategies to reduce unwanted pregnancies, not about research on Pearl Index etc. It is simply to train women to better observe their own body. For this we need no brochures, no films, no speakers and generators. We just need communication skills and the appropriate attitudes.
My wish: regularly in the HIFA-news a specific practical skill is described, maybe accompanied with a video. For this, a new forum, a group of say 5 to 7 persons would be built, female and male, from different health-related professions and different continents.
Right now in Benin, West-Africa, and a native German speaker, I might participate in such a group, but not lead it. Thank you.
Felix Küchler, MD, MSc Health Promotion (LSHTM)
Dr in human medicine, Zürich, Switzerland. Primary Health Care work in Chad and Benin: bilateral cooperation, working for the Swiss and Dutch development agencies. Course-Coordinator at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. Initiator of the Desired Motherhood - Programm in Benin, West-Africa. Retired. Co-editor of a book on Natural Family Planning, to be released end 2023.
HIFA profile: Felix A. Kuechler is a medical doctor and health promotion expert based in Switzerland. He is director of Desired Motherhood, which promotes natural fertility regulation.
www.maternitedesiree.org www.desiredmotherhood.org felix.kuechler@maternitedesiree.org
Work:
1984-1991 Primary Health Care, Chad and Benin: Training Village Health Workers
1993-1998 Course Coordinator, Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute, Basel
1999-2004 Co-Director at 'Health Promotion Switzerland'
since 2010 developing training program for natural fertility regulation in rural areas of The Gambia, Benin and Niger.
Training:
1980 Medical Doctor, Zurich, Switzerland
1987 Diploma 'Teaching Primary Health Care', Liverpool School Tropical Medicine
1993 MSc Health Promotion, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
