Photo retrieved from who.int
It takes two days’ journey at least from Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands, to reach the mountain village of Kuvamiti to provide and deliver routine health care and immunization for the people who live and work there. Supply efforts and logistics were even more arduous during the COVID-19 pandemic. A COVID-19 vaccination team driver and his colleague were nearly lost to strong undersurface river currents late last year near Kuvamiti.
There are no bridges on this journey over more than 20 rivers.
Instead those taking the path to Kuvamiti from the capital on the island of Guadalcanal must either range through by auto or wade across the waters. As shown in this photo essay from a field vaccination and health care expedition in May 2023 by a Guadalcanal Province team— supported by UNICEF, WHO and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance—it’s worth it. The people who live in the hill country around Kuvamiti make it so. Some of them walk for hours to meet the team on its rounds.
Drivers, nurses, and the islanders themselves in the Solomons travel rugged terrain and open water, overcoming risk and fatigue, to deliver vital health care.
This essay follows health care workers and bearers heading from the Totongo clinic, on the coast, inland to Kuvamiti village in the mountains. They are bringing COVID-19 and childhood vaccines as well as routine health care to villagers and those who live in the surroundings—some of whom will walk six hours to ensure a child’s checkup. From a vaccination perspective, it is an integrated effort meeting a variety of basic health care needs: treatments, therapeutics and vaccines for children, adolescents and adults. Looking ahead this approach may become increasingly common.
The group huddles to consult and take the measure of the river, led by the medical truck driver, Sam, who works with the province. He’s also the risk manager for river fording. His experience is hard-won: in late 2022 during a COVID-19 vaccine delivery he and a colleague had to swim for it and abandon a vehicle being carried into dangerous deep water by this very same river, the Ruamiti.