Aparicio Da C Soares
Medical Director at the Soibada Clinic  (he is also a nurse)

'I want everyone to get cleverer.  If everyone is clever then we can think well and build the village together'

                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
I grew up in Soibada.

I am married, my wife is a midwife at the clinic.
I have 5 children.  The oldest is 20, he goes to the university, the youngest is 10 years old.

I want my children to be educated so that they can get jobs.

When asked what he wanted for the village, he said:
‘I want everyone to get cleverer.  If everyone is clever then we can think well and build the village together.’

I am very grateful that we (Australians and Timorese) can work together to solve the problems of the clinic.

The biggest problems that we have is 1. Water, although this is a little better now.  

(Whilst in Soibada, Pittwater Friends of Soibada instigated the repair of the water pipes that brings fresh water to the clinic.  The clinic had previously been without water for 4 months)

and 2. Transport.  The roads are very bad and it is difficult to transfer patients from rural areas.  When patients are very sick we transfer them to the National Hospital in Dili.

When asked ‘What happens in the Wet Season ?(From November to May the river rises and the roads out of the village are cut off)  Aparicio answered that an Ambulance is sent from Manatuta and the ambulance from Soibada takes the patient to one side of the river and then they have to cross the footbridge to the ambulance on the other side.  If the patient can’t cross the bridge then they must come back to the clinic and they do what they can for them.

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3. Equipment is broken and we have no way to fix it or replace it.
The things that we need most for the clinic are a Blood Pressure machine to read blood pressure and a Doppler machine.