BACK	MALDIVES: Feasting on Island Paradise Raises Health Funds

This year, on November 14, about 400 Male residents will be ferried to the remote island, and to the beat of rolling drums and lapping waves, will finish off a meal which will bring them a unique sense of satisfaction, organisers say.

The revelry is for a good cause - it raises funds for the Society for Health Education (SHE), a non-government organisation devoted to promoting good health and family values.

''We have done it every year and wealthy residents gladly join in this unique fund-raising exercise,'' says Nasreen Ibrahim, a founding member of SHE.

Ibrahim, the wife of Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, thinks the programme has a future. ''The dinner has worked well as a fund-raiser in the past and it is now an annual event.''

When Ibrahim and three friends launched SHE in April 1988, she took on tremendous odds. Besides the conservatism of an Islamic society, the group had to cope with the logistics of travelling to remote islands in an archipelago spread over 754 kms.

''Travelling alone takes away two-thirds of our budget and getting to these islands is hard and takes a lot time,'' says Mohammed Zuhair, the organisation's chief executive officer. While the more distant islands are best reached by air, SHE workers depend on 'dhonis' when there is need to cover two or more adjacent islands on a typical three-day sortie.

Once on the island, SHE teams get busy with activities ranging from health education, family planning to good parenting, counselling, hygiene and medical care. An important activity is help for victims of thalassaemia, a blood disorder which afflicts a high 18 per cent of Maldives' 245,000 people.

''We pioneered counselling and thalassaemia education in in Maldives,'' says Naila Firdous, one of the three founder- members and an obstetrician by profession. Thanks to SHE's efforts every school leaver understands the nature of the genetic blood disease excerbated by inbreeding among the isolated Maldivian community.

According to Firdous, SHE has also succeeded in making Maldivians, 90 per cent of whom are illiterate, understand a highly-technical medical condition which can be treated only by regular medication or blood transfusion. ''It requres a lot of explanation in very simple language,'' Firdous explains.

SHE's success is palpable in the 50 to 60 people who throng its cramped office in Male daily for voluntary testing and advice. Residents also call in for advice over the telephone on problems ranging from family issues to teenage problems and drugs. issues not even discussed just five years ago.

Over a fifth of the country's population lives in Male which is just one square kilometre in size. All residents are Moslems, but Islamic traditions blend with a western outlook mostly generated by tourism and visible in the popularity of denim trousers among teenagers.

Of Maldives' 200 inhabited islands, 86 have been developed as tourist resorts catering mainly to Western visitors as well as Japanese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong Chinese. The resorts draw yearly an average 300,000 tourists who enjoy the palm-fringed milky-white beaches, which are off-limits to locals.

While tourism is the biggest foreign exchange earner, fishing and shipping are also major economic activities.

While the remoteness of the islands are attractive for tourists who want get away from it all, it adds to the many ways in which SHE's work is unique. ''Where in the world do you have to reach 200-odd islands that are so far-flung like here? We have to cross the Indian Ocean to reach communities, some as small as 300 people,'' she Ibrahim.

SHE has a full-time staff of 22, with some 30 to 40 volunteer doctors, nurses, mid-wives, educators, counsellors, teachers and social workers who make regular visits to the islands.

The visits are not without embarrassing and sometimes amusing moments. Once on a small island, after Firdous and her team laid out contraceptives and leaflets on a camp cot and prepared to talk to women on family planning, she asked the local mid-wife how many babies were born that year. None so far, she was told, and just one woman was pregnant.

Firdous quickly switched to a different set of leaflets and spoke to the women about child-bearing and nutrition for those seeking to have children.

SHE has many firsts to its credit. Though family planning is promoted by the government in a big way, SHE was the first to start family planning clinics, and not without difficulty.

True to their South Asian conservative traditions and beliefs, Maldivian women were initially reluctant to embrace family planning. ''When we first started to promote family planning, the women just smiled shyly and walked away,'' said Firdous, who handles the medical and health needs of the group.

Recounting one such island visit, Firdous said scepticism was partly overcome after she removed a large tumour from a woman leader of the community. ''In addition to commanding respect from her community, she was also a big woman and others followed suit.'' Firdous said.

With such achievments, it is not surprising that SHE bagged last year the World Health Organisation's Sasakawa award for health development and also recieved a Commonwealth award for improving the lives of women.

SHE, which receives financial help from international donors, has been given land by the government to build a new office. ''We are relying on donor help,'' says Zuhair, who also appeals for more donor assistance for Thalasseamia education. ''This is an important part of our work and we don't get any donor funds for it,'' he said.

SHE's efforts are paying off. Well-known doctors in the capital are forsaking lunches on Thursday afternoon and head instead for the islands, where long queues await them.

Asked whether they planned to cover all the islands where there are small communities, Firdous said: ''We would like to try, but it is a difficult task. What we would like to do most is improve the quality of our services.'' (END/IPS/AP-HE/FS/RD/RAL/97)