Photo stories: better health, better life

By Mike Saycon

Xaiathon works all day – at home and in the field – and still finds time to breast feed her youngest son and play with her sons. Living an hour from her rice field, and even farther from the town centre, means a challenge to juggle her role at home and in following through her and her children’s health checks. Still, the boys are healthy, she says – and she and her husband are trying to have a baby girl.

Vilayphone and her husband Sonephet regularly take their five-month old son Konkham to the village health centre in Dongsavanh for his dose of vaccines and monitoring his weight. They want to keep him healthy and strong.

Lii, who was already married at age 15, comes to the health clinic in Dongsavanh Village to see her nurse, Keolammone, who makes sure she is healthy and ready to give birth in four months’ time. Lii works in the farm with her husband, but she has decided to stop working for now, to make sure she and her baby will remain healthy.

At only age 24, Chansamone works at the Phonxai Village health centre with the few other, servicing women and children from 10 villages and 21 sub-villages. She also does the works of being both a nurse and a midwife. The logo on her uniform says ‘Safe Mother, Safe Baby’.

Patients arrive at the district hospital in Xepon, Savannakhet, for their health checks, on their farm tractor – which is the only common mode of transport in rural areas. For many families who do not own any or cannot afford to hire one, they simply forgo their health checks, including immunisation doses for their children, and instead work at their farms. © UNICEF Laos/2018/Mike Saycon