11
Understanding and Mobilizing
for Community Health
When Gloria and other health promoters realized many people in Manglaralto
and the surrounding region were getting sick, they quickly knew the problem
was cholera, a community health problem with an environmental cause:
contaminated water. The health promoters and village health educators went
from house to house to educate everyone about the problem and what to do. Once
the success of the basic treatments had earned people’s trust, the community
began to work on the root causes of the cholera and other health problems.
Working on the root causes through community participation and
education, the community was able to begin making many environmental
health improvements. With each improvement, the villagers gained greater
confidence in their ability to change their own lives.
It is necessary to ask many questions and collect information in various
ways to find the cause of a health problem. Often there are strong conflicts in
a community that require long processes of discussion and struggle to resolve.
While each community will find its own way toward making changes and
use different activities as it organizes, the experiences of Salud para el Pueblo
give some examples of how communities can learn about the root causes of
environmental health problems and work to change them.