By Tendai Keith Guvamombe
Working with individuals, patients and communities who need her help has become part of Azalet Dubes DNA as a Health Promoter (HP) with Doctors Without Borders (MSF). On any given day, Mama Dube, as she is affectionately known, can be found facilitating health talks; conducting workshops for partner organisations on health promotion; sharing information with patients or simply lending an empathetic ear to those who need it.
A teacher and counsellor by profession, Azalet traded her first love,10 years of teaching, for health promotion a few years ago, and has never looked back.
My love for helping people in distress, especially children, is deep, and just knowing they are well warms my heart. My teaching experience prepared me for health promotion; it makes it easy to engage with patients or communities when I conduct health talks. I realised that the teacher in me would enable me to easily share information and make a bigger impact, says Azalet.
Her journey with MSF began nearly eight years ago, when she worked as a counsellor in a migration project supporting people excluded from accessing healthcare in central Johannesburg, and in Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, where she worked as an HP supervisor in the HIV project. During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, she fearlessly supported MSFs response in Gauteng Province, South Africa, going into communities to teach handwashing, wearing masks, and share information about the services MSF offered. Cyril Ramaphosa, the President of South Africa, could not resist recognising her outstanding work in his weekly presidential newsletter.
Today, Azalet is once again supporting migrants who were displaced by Junes anti-migrant violence in the country. She is part of the team working in Johannesburg, providing primary healthcare, chronic care, psychological support and first aid. The team also provides essential items, including hygiene kits and supports referral pathways to clinics and hospitals for patients requiring further care. The lessons she learnt during COVID time are the same ones she is carrying forward in this migration intervention, with teamwork being the main one.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, we worked as a team, and this is what helped us to be effective despite the massive challenges we faced. The President’s recognition was a testament to teamwork; it was not just my work but a contribution by each team member, says Azalet.
As the HP team, we are the front runners and the face of our interventions. When we arrive in a community, we explain our role as MSF, who we are, what we do, the services we offer, our protocols and how we work. Once the community accepts us, the rest of the team follows. This is all teamwork because all other teams will then get into it already knowing all is set and that makes our work easier, she adds.
This migrant intervention has given Azalet yet another opportunity to see teamwork in action, while supporting patients and those who need MSF support. She recalls a recent incident when she was supporting displaced people who sought refuge in an open space in Johannesburg after they were forcibly driven out of their homes.
Among the hundreds gathered there, I saw a woman who was struggling to soothe her two-month-old baby while also caring for a toddler and a young child who were also competing for her attention. She explained she couldn’t produce enough milk to breastfeed due to stress and lack of food; the baby had been crying since the previous night. The woman was overwhelmed and in tears. The baby was cold and hungry,” Azalet says.
Azalet and the rest of the team stepped in immediately to help.
We all left what we were doing to focus on the baby. I took the baby and dressed her up comfortably, while the other colleague prepared formula milk. After a while, the baby stopped crying and fell asleep. Seeing everyone step up to support her moved me. It is something that will stay with me teamwork is the key to unlocking anything. Such situations always leave me with a heart full of gratitude, she says.
Every day brings different experiences for Azalet and her colleagues; this is why she is inspired to carry on as a health promoter. In the current emergency, she has been a pillar of strength to thousands of migrants whom she and the team have engaged with and supported in Gauteng province.
Since July, the team has reached out to over 4,000 migrants, listening to many heart-rending stories of loss, desperation, fear and disease and have held several health talks, either individually or in groups.
