BE Health believes health can be contagious

Djibouti Palace Kempinski first hired me in 2010, as a tennis instructor. In 2015, Anne-Marie Bettex, managing director of BE Health, invited me to join her association. Now I am the coordinator of BE Health in Djibouti. Our mission is to raise awareness and protect the most vulnerable people from diseases like tuberculosis, HIV and malaria. We take a two-pronged approach. One prong is to train a certain number of staff as peer educators, teaching them about TB, HIV and malaria so that they can transmit their knowledge to their colleagues. They also act as sentinels, looking out for signs of illness and warning the sick person or taking them to a doctor. The other is to try to change high-risk behaviour and the mentalities associated with cultural resistance. We are active in our neighbourhoods, communities, schools and youth clubs, and of course in our own families and social circles. I really wanted to get involved because I have been helping people in need in my neighbourhood since I was 15. So I became a peer educator and then a coordinator.

The peer educators are trained by experts on tuberculosis, HIV and malaria. They also get training in verbal communication. Today, 12 peer educators conduct twice-monthly awareness-raising operations among street children in the care of Caritas, and in two high schools and the town's associations. We have trained 25 peer educators at the Djibouti Palace Kempinski since 2014. There is real demand from the staff.

Yes. I can tell you about one case, Zacharia, a young employee at the hotel. Three months after he arrived, he caught TB. Thanks to my training, I noticed he was sick and took him straight to the hospital. The doctor immediately put him on sick leave and gave him a course of treatment. He has now recovered and is back in his job. There's also the case of a man I saw in the street. He seemed very weak and was coughing violently. I asked him if he needed help. He said he had been sick for two years and had no support. I took him to a pneumologist the same day. Now I often pass him in the street and it's a pleasure to greet him.

We focus on young, uneducated people because they have no access to information. We have a real preventive role to play with them. It's vitally important that they become aware of the risks of these diseases, especially HIV. Six per cent of 15 to 24-year-olds are infected with that virus. These youngsters listen seriously and pay attention to the message we convey.

Here in Djibouti, the women are much timider. But there are some women who want to play an active part in disease prevention. Which is lucky, because they are better at passing on the message to people of all ages. In Djibouti, people listen to women more than to the men.

My greatest satisfaction would be to succeed in motivating my team even more. I'd like to see an even better relationship among all the members, and of course, I'd like our work to advance faster. My biggest obstacle is time. We ought to have more time for conducting even more operations in the field.