Health Promoters Stop Cholera
How the vision of environmental health began to grow
Over time, the health promoters also realized disease-carrying insects were
breeding in trash and trash dumps. They held community meetings about the
need to clean up the streets and to improve the dumps. Each village formed
a group of “environmental health promoters” who organized work days for
everyone to pick up trash. With help from an engineer, the environmental
health promoters turned waste dumps into safe pits called sanitary landfills
(see page 412). Over the next few years, the promoters talked about starting a
recycling program (see page 404) to reduce the amount of trash in the landfills.
When an international agency donated a big truck to haul trash to the regional
recycling center in the city, they were able to do just that. The money earned
from recycling helped pay for gasoline and the costs of maintaining the truck.
By 1996, Salud para el Pueblo had built hundreds of toilets,
installed many piped water systems, dug 2 sanitary landfills,
started a recycling program, and began to help
people plant community gardens.
5
Then in 1997 disaster struck. The rainstorms known as El Niño hit the coast
of Ecuador. For 6 months there were strong winds and rain nearly every day.
The winds tore up the trees, rain turned the hills to muddy landslides, and
the valleys filled with raging brown rivers. The rivers overflowed and changed
course, destroying whole villages. Toilets, water pipes, and years of hard work
were washed away.
As the hills collapsed, the work of Salud para el Pueblo nearly collapsed with
them. To better understand why this happened, we must look at the history of
the region.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012