New project: Oxygen for TB patients in East Timor

Photocircle has once more spread its wings and taken off to yet another destination: Timor-Leste! At the other end of the globe, we now engage in community health care with the Bairo Pite Clinic (BPC).

BPC is located in Dili, the capital of East Timor (or Timor-Leste, which is Australia’s second closest neighbor), and the largest non-government provider of comprehensive (and free!) healthcare services in East Timor. It was established in 1999 by Dr. Dan Murphy and quickly became a heavily frequented place. For 16 years now, Dr. Dan has worked 6.5 days a week, day and night, on average seeing 150 outpatients every day – without being paid for it. He gets support from a Clinic Manager and over 80 medical staff.

The BPC provides

• over 200 GP-style consultations every day
• accident and emergency care: 3,297 consultations in 2012
• a malnutrition ward for children
• TB diagnosis and management
• immunisation for 3000 children/year
• training and teaching
• community birth attendants (100 babies delivered/month)
• TB monitors, HIV program, leprosy treatment and soon…
• An oxygen concentrator!

An oxygen concentrator is a device which concentrates the oxygen from the air and provides an oxygen enriched gas mixture through a mask. East Timor has one of the highest rates of patients with Tuberculosis (TB) in South East Asia. Often, this disease affects the lungs, and therefore the ability to breath in oxygen. So the availability of an oxygen concentrator is one of the key needs of the Bairo Pite Clinic. And with your help, we are going to get one for them! Whenever you buy on of these pictures – or any other  from our collection of photographic gems from Australia, New Zealand and Oceania – Photocircle donates a percentage of the total price towards the purchase of such a life-saving device for the BPC.