Lauren Wimetal
Doctor

Lauren Wimetal first went to East Timor in 2001 as a medical student, and has since been five times, now as a doctor, offering free and much-needed medical assistance.

As a fluent speaker of the native language, Lauren has most recently put her skills to work in an extremely isolated village in East Timor, called Uaimori.
Uaimori, located in the eastern half of the nation, is well-known for being the location of the main base of the resistance fighters, Falantil, during the 25 year occupation by Indonesia. She is working with people who do not have the luxuries that most Westerners do, things like life insurance with Aviva (http://www.aviva.co.uk/life-insurance/) or another company is just one of the things that people take for granted. That is why the work that Lauren does is so valuable and makes such a difference to these people's lives.

Unfortunately, Uaimori is now more well-known for its inaccessibility and isolation. As Lauren found out when she recently traveled to Uaimori with a full ute-load of medical supplies, only 28km from the main road meant 14 hours of virtually building a new road to get there.

But fortunately, it was all well worth it. With a population approaching 2000 people, Lauren was able to put her fluency in the local language and medical skills to good use, with people queuing up to be seen daily from dawn to dusk and beyond. Common complaints included malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoeal illnesses, worm infestations, and musculoskeletal complaints from the hard physical work of life in the sustenance farming village. With most children well below the height and weight you would expect, even of a child in the capital of East Timor, every family also received a generous supply of vitamin supplements in addition to other medicines specific to their complaints.

Whilst in Uaimori, Lauren also conducted a meeting of the local leaders, to assess the further needs of the community, medical and otherwise. Having now returned to Melbourne, she is currently working on forming an organization aimed at providing assistance to this neglected area of East Timor, and will again be returning to Uaimori next year.

Other areas of involvement in East Timor for Lauren have been providing health education to police cadets on HIV/AIDS, co-ordinating and interpreting for Timorese patients requiring operations in Australia, and assisting in multiple Melbourne-based Timorese community activities.
For more information about supporting Uaimori, please contact Lauren at lauren_wimetal@yahoo.com. She is also available to show a video presentation about Uaimori to local community groups or schools.