While many have returned to their home countries through repatriation during this COVID-19 pandemic, one man is in no such hurry to go anywhere. Paramedic Nich Woolf, has been in Santo since February volunteering with ProMedical and working with the local community. With over 40years of experience, Nich has travelled to many different countries during his career to either work or volunteer his services. He’s had a very busy career in his hometown of Burnham-On-Sea in Somerset, England and also in countries like Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Haiti. Two years ago he travelled to Vanuatu and volunteered in Santo for 2 months and came back earlier this year. With the border closure, his stay has been extended indefinitely. We spoke to him about the work he’s doing in Santo.

Q: How does a man from a seaside town in England become a volunteer on the other side of the world?

A: I had a crewman in Wales who emigrated to Brisbane and he basically pushed a Facebook page towards me electronically, and I thought, Oh that looks nice, and so I came over.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?

A: I do 4 days working and 4 days off. And a day is a full 24 hours so I’m on call for half of that and actually on the station for the other half. I do some training with the staff here…and give back some of my experience to help them. Also going out and doing jobs with the. Some of those jobs on Santo, as you can imagine, are quite long, it’s not the quickest place to get around.

Q: What is the biggest health problem you’re seeing in the islands?

A: Lots and lots of infection problems, whether it’s leptospirosis that you catch from rats, or it’s diabetic problems with infected feet. They’re all very ordinary things but they’re also very severe because people don’t always get the help quickly enough and everything in the tropics is that much more severe than outside the tropics.

Q: There was an opportunity for you to jump on a repatriation flight so you could make your journey home but you chose to stay. Why?

A: The difficulty was that there’s no direct flight to the UK so I would have had to stop in places where I might well have caught it so I didn’t want to leave a COVID-19 free island to go and catch it all the way back there.

Q: What other projects are you involved in?

I saw a photograph on Facebook after the cyclone (TC Harold) of a kindergarten that had literally been blown away. There was just a concrete slab with lots of children sitting on the slab and I thought, well that’s not right. I put the question on the page saying how much would it cost to rebuild it. Long and short is we’re heavily involved with trying to raise some money and also been in talks with the MoE and going out to some of these sites in South Santo and Malo. It turns out there’s over 50 kindergartens that have literally disappeared. It’s important that they’re replaced with something that will actually withstand future cyclones because the children are very unsafe during these events.  We went to one village on Malo where during the cyclone they drained the water out of their rain water tank which is concrete and they were putting children in through the hatch at the top to protect them.

Q: How can people help?

A: There is a GoFundMe page and they can also go to Big Hearts Island Vanuatu on Facebook.

Q: What have you learnt about the people of Vanuatu since you’ve been here?

A: They are incredibly resourceful, incredibly calm and very resilient. I mean back in the UK if this happened, people would be starving to death simply because they don’t have the skill to look after themselves. It’s amazing this place.

Q: What will be the biggest takeaway for you after spending all this time in Vanuatu when you eventually leave?

A: I really have an appreciation for what people get by with here. You actually see a lot of children who are probably happier than the children in the UK, I don’t hear very many complaints. That’s probably what I’ll take home with me is that people just get on with it.

Q: With the COVID-19 situation and knowing what our current health system is like and the resources we have available, what is your message for the government and the people of Vanuatu?

A: There has to be considerable investment in health. Because people who are unhealthy and people who have disabilities get on very, very poorly in this type of environment. And it’s also that people will be much more productive. Everywhere is going to have to get the economy going again. And if you have a lot of sick people around, that’s not going to happen. One of the best investments that governments can make is in health.

Nich will continue to help the community in Santo while he waits for the borders to open so that he can return home.

ProMedical has been providing paramedic services in Port Vila since September 2000. A big thank you to Vanuatu Emergency Medical Services Association, the charity organisation running ProMed, for all the work that they do to keep this very essential service operating. ProMed relies on sponsorship and subscriptions to run so please contact them on 26996 or email [email protected] for more information.