hopebuilding

Acupuncturists bring healing, relief, local training across the globe

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Acupuncturists are bringing relief from pain and trauma to people around the world, in from Guatemala to Uganda, and training community practitioners to carry out this work in remote communities and villages. They also are bringing relief to the victims of natural disasters in the United States, and to American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Here are four of their projects:

Guatemala Acupuncture and Medical Aid Project

Since 1994, the Guatemala Acupuncture and Medical Aid Project (GUAMAP) has been sending Spanish-speaking acupuncturists equipped with medicines, needles, teaching tools and treatment supplies to villages in northern Guatemala. Local trainers of health promoters integrate GUAMAP´s acupuncture training course into an ongoing health care curriculum. GUAMAP also sends shipments of medicines and specialized supplies requested by health promoter representatives for various community health projects. Training in acupuncture as preventive and curative medicine began in Guatemala during the 1970s, was used by communities in exile during the 1980s, in Mexican refugee camps, and then resumed in Guatemala in the 1990s. The method has been eagerly accepted by rural communities and its use is growing, says GUAMAP, which is based in Arizona.

GUAMAP's partner is the Asociacion de Servicios Comunitarios de Salud (Association of Community Health Services - ASECSA), a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization that is the leading provider of rural health care training throughout Guatemala. ASECSA has more than 25 years of experience in addressing the public health needs of rural Guatemalans. Their training for "health promoters" (community members who function as the "barefoot doctors" of Guatemala) included a course on acupressure, even before the formal working relationship between the organizations was initiated. "This alliance has been crucial in securing trust and ensuring that our organization is functioning in accordance with local people's wishes, without imposing itself on the Guatemalans," says Blake Gentry, who co-founded GUAMAP with Laurie Melrood and Ron Rosen.

With only nine doctors for every 10,000 people, health care services are only available to the 60% of the population that live in or near a city. Diseases associated with poverty are the leading causes of death - pneumonia, gastrointestinal infections, perinatal conditions that claim the life of the mother, and malnutrition. Most rural residents live in small communities of 500 or fewer, and must walk for hours to reach a medical clinic. Medical needs of people in the rural areas are largely covered by nursing aides, rural health technicians, midwives, and unsalaried community health promoters.

PanAfrican Acupuncture Project

Since the spring of 2003, the Massachusetts-based PanAfrican Acupuncture Project has trained 160 Ugandan and 22 Kenyan healthcare workers in acupuncture techniques to help relieve symptoms associated with HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. The trainings were held in various regions of Uganda. Other African countries, including Malawi and Nigeria, have expressed a strong interest in having PAAP come to conduct acupuncture trainings. Modelled after the Guatemalan program, the project trains local community healthcare providers including midwives, physiotherapists, traditional healers, and medical doctors so they can provide the treatments, supported by a manual that explains acupuncture theory and techniques in clear and simple terms.

Richard Mandell, 54, a teacher at the New England School of Acupuncture, created the project in response to the overwhelming number of people infected with HIV in Africa, after watching his Boston patients with HIV/AIDS respond positively to acupuncture. At first, he wanted to go to Africa to treat people himself, but then he decided it was more practical, and empowering, to train African healthcare workers to practice acupuncture themselves. He wrote a manual that enables students to practice acupuncture even if they don't understand why a specific point correlates with the particular ailment.

Patient response is “phenomenal”, said Canadian acupuncturist and trainer Emilie Salomons. “It was often the response of the patient which convinced the healthcare worker to implement acupuncture into their rural health centres. Reaction to the acupuncture, for reasons we can only start to imagine, was much faster and more drastic than in North America. Often what took 4 or 5 treatments in North America to see effect would take one treatment in the village clinic. We had people literally jumping off the treatment tables dancing with relief.”

When UNHCR invited four trainers and three experienced trainees to visit Nakivale refugee camp in western Uganda, home to approximately 15,000 refugees from Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Somalia, many of whom have lived in exile for decades, the response was overwhelming. One trainee said that by the second day, they were swamped by people wanting treatment – so many that they could not have treated them all even if they stayed three weeks, she said. They worked for three days in a clinic in one part of the camp and two days in a clinic in another part.

Acupuncturists without Borders

Diana Fried, an acupuncturist in New Mexico, had long dreamed of creating an organization of acupuncturists that could go to areas of disaster, much like the Red Cross does, to provide acupuncture treatments to relieve acute stress or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Many people in New York City were treated with acupuncture after 9/11. In 2005, in the wake of that year's devastating hurricanes, Fried created Acupuncturists without Borders to provide immediate relief and recovery acupuncture services globally in cases of disaster or human conflict, and training to support local self-directed, self-sufficient, proactive and long-term recovery, rebuilding and trauma resolution.

In Louisiana, 80 volunteer acupuncturists came to New Orleans to work with AWB. "Housed in a FEMA 'tent city', along with fire and rescue workers, police, utility workers, National Guard, and volunteers from Americorps, Common Ground and many others, the acupuncturists were given a huge military-style tent to set up as their base of operations," says Penny Todd. "Several nights each week, a sign was placed out front to notify the tent city resident rescue workers that free acupuncture was available. Weary workers would stream in throughout the evening to receive the 5 needle NADA protocol, and sometimes other body points. Those new to acupuncture often came in with skeptical looks, raised eyebrows, and embarrassed smiles, but soon after the needles were placed, eyes begin to close and heads nod. The energy in the room shifted. At the end of each session, comments were often heard like: 'This stuff is amazing!' 'I don’t remember ever feeling this relaxed.' 'How often can I do this?' 'When will you be back?'”

"Flexibility and creativity are constantly being called for as volunteers set up improvised clinics on a street corner in front of a mosque turned into a temporary free medical clinic, in parks next to free meal and water distribution sites, in churches in Vietnamese and Honduran communities where no English is spoken, in a storm damaged day care center now devoid of children, and other equally unlikely sites," Todd said. "Many recipients share stories of the terror they endured; their homes gone, businesses destroyed either by the floods or by looters that came later. Others choose to just sit quietly and receive the gentle tending. Tears, hugs, and words of gratitude are commonplace. Sharing moments with so many strong spirits is incredibly inspiring. Not once did I hear anyone complain, or say 'why me?' They told their stories and went on to talk of hope and rebuilding their lives.”

Their community acupuncture method is well-suited to conditions faced in a disaster or after traumatic events, says AWB. “We can set up our treatments almost anywhere and we can immediately treat large groups of people. Treatments last from 30-60 minutes with people receiving treatment while sitting in a chair fully clothed. Under the NADA protocol needles go on the ears. The treatments done by AWB acupuncturists are effective for helping people facing enormous stress, anger, frustration, depression, fatigue and other emotional and physical pain. The therapeutic effects happen quickly and can last a long time.”

Treatments are effective and help the survivors of trauma as well as emergency responders and relief workers. “These simple acupuncture treatments can have a transformative effect without requiring the traumatized client to talk. Done in groups, community acupuncture can help break the isolation often felt after traumatic events. Even those who resist traditional treatment for Acute Stress Disorder are often willing to receive acupuncture. Treatments support rebuilding strength and resiliency, essential for the recovery process. Acupuncture treatments have a calming effect and help those struggling with anger, hostility and frustration.”

AWB is now engaged in a project to treat soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and their families with free community acupuncture. Guided by its experience in New Orleans and a pilot veterans clinic in New Mexico which began in October 2006, AWB is working to make the unique free clinics available around the United States. “Our intention is to help in the recovery process from the enormous impact of war, thereby helping veterans as well as their families, communities, the country, and the world by intervening in the cycle of trauma.”

More than 500 acupuncturists have been trained at AWN Healing Community Trauma Trainings held around the US and hundreds of others have applied to work with AWB in the field. AWB is building a nationwide network of acupuncturists trained to respond to trauma and disaster, and is working to make community acupuncture part of the standard of care in the immediate aftermath of disasters, alongside traditional medical interventions.

Acupuncture without Borders

The Swiss-based Acupuncture without Borders, part of Cornelius Celsus Foundation, began in 1992. Among other projects, it trained 11 nurses in acupuncture in collaboration with the Help Haiti Association between 1996 and 2000, and trained two groups of nurses in Burkina Faso between 2000 and 2007. In 2007, Acupuncture without Borders began a training program in Mauritania in conjunction with teachers of the French organization, SFERE College (Société Française d'Etudes et de Recherches en Energétique ), and hopes to see an acupuncture unit opened at Atar Hospital.

In 2007, the organization finalized agreements to train staff of bush dispensaries in Cameroon, nurses in a health care district in Senegal, and health care personnel in rural areas of Bolivia.

Acupuncture without Borders studies and carries out humanitarian missions in developing countries which can benefit from its intervention. Its goal is to contribute to the greater self-reliance of disadvantaged peoples in medical care, by bringing them training and practical experience in the therapeutic applications of organic medicine, especially acupuncture.

This story was prepared from information on the websites of all four organizations (see live links in the items above). For a story about volunteers' experience with GUAMAP, see Acupuncture in the Global Village: The Guatemala Acupuncture and Medical Aid Project, by Kristen Porter, MAc, LAc and Beth Sommers, MPH, Lac, Acupuncture Today, August 2005 Vol. 6(8). For a story about the PanAfrican Acupuncture Project, see He trains Ugandans to use acupuncture. Brookline specialist takes needles, hope to the heart of the African AIDS epidemic, by Melissa Jeltsen, Boston Globe, July 16, 2007.

For stories relating to TB diagnosis and treatment, see:

Cooperation between HIV and TB programs can save thousands of lives

‘Integrating TB and HIV treatment and care saves lives’, South African study finds

Rats sniff out land mines, tuberculosis in Africa

For other stories about practical health care solutions in Africa, see:

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Benin is an ongoing success story in eliminating endemic river blindness

Coping with the grief and loss of AIDS: memory projects bring hope to Africa

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Motorbike ambulances save lives of mothers, babies, in remote areas of Africa