The Red Cross medical and social service "Dapamoha"
The first visiting nurses of the Red Cross started their work in Belarus in the second half of the 19th century. They helped in hospitals, provided care for the seriously ill, worked at the sites of infections in the communities of nurses of the local administrations of the Russian Red Cross Society in Minsk, Vitebsk, Grodno and Mogilev.
In 1921, the Belarus Red Cross Society (BRC) was established in Belarus. Since 1930, the Red Cross launched short-term evening and morning training courses for nurses, and since 1936, a year and a half of sanitary instructor courses have been organized on the basis of four-year education. By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War the Belarus Red Cross had trained tens of thousands of nurses. They aided the sick and wounded on the battlefields, in hospitals, in partisan detachments.
In the post-war period, Red Cross nurses became the hope and support for veterans of the Great Patriotic War and the persons who became disabled as a result of participation in the Great Patriotic War. In 1964, the Visiting Nurses Service was established to provide home care for veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Soon, the list of beneficiaries expanded: nurses started to provide aid to lonely and living alone elderly people and people of old age, people with disabilities. In 2018, the Service got a new name - the medico-social service of the Red Cross "Dapamoha". The service has 225 staff (174 positions): nurses, junior nurses, psychologists and social workers. And more than 800 volunteers support them.
Visiting nurses of the Red Cross are qualified medical specialists. They use modern technologies in providing nursing care for seriously ill people and regularly upgrade their professional skills by learning modern methods within the framework of international cooperation.
Junior visiting nurses of the Red Cross perform the functions of a social worker and are necessarily trained in home care for seriously ill people. They provide social and domestic services, such as hygiene, cleaning, cooking and much more.
Volunteers are men and women of all ages. They help provide home care to the beneficiaries, regularly visit them and maintain contacts, do the cleaning, washing, buy medicines and food, and cook.
Beneficiaries of the Service
Beneficiaries of the Service are lonely and living alone elderly people and people of old age, with multiple diseases, with mental disorders, cancer and other serious chronic diseases, adults and children with disabilities, as well as people living with HIV/AIDS.
The medico-social service of the Red Cross is unique due to its long-term integrated home care, which includes medical care, individual care and social services.
Annually, about 1500 people are provided home care, 47% of whom are first-category beneficiaries, including those with group I disabilities.
Highest award
Twelve visiting nurses from Belarus were awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal, the highest and most honorable award for qualifies nurses in the world.
Founded in 1912 by the League of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the medal is awarded every two years for exceptional courage and selflessness displayed in peacetime or wartime, in caring for the wounded, sick, disabled or civilians affected by conflict, natural disaster or man made disaster, as well as for their commitment, innovative spirit and creativity.
«“Pro vera misericordia et cara humanitate perennis décor universalis” ('true and loving humanitarianism – a lasting general propriety')» is written on the reverse side of the medal. Worldwide, there are more than 13 million nurses and male nurses, but only 1,512 of them today have this award.
Six nurses from Belarus, participants of the Great Patriotic War, were awarded this medal for their heroic deeds during the wartime. They are the legendary Zinaida Mikhailovna Tusnolobova-Marchenko, Hero of the Soviet Union, Sofia Vasilievna Golukhova, Yevgeniya Maksimovna Shevchenko, Ekaterina Yefimovna Sirenko, Sofia Adamovna Kuntsevich and Maria Afanasyevna Garachuk.
In peace-time, six nurses from Belarus were awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal for their selfless service to the lonely elderly and seriously ill people. Five of them are nurses of the Belarus Red Cross Society. The first medal was awarded in 2009 to Nina Bliznyuk from Minsk. In 2011, the award was bestowed upon Ludmila Lelikova, a resident of Mogilev. In 2013, medals were awarded to three nurses at once: - Olga Geitseva from Mozyr, Tamara Tereshina from Brest and Isolda Semushina from Minsk. In 2019, the medal was awarded to Galina Kulagina from Minsk.
Photo: Nina Bliznyuk
Thanks to these women, hundreds of people were not left alone with severe illness and loneliness. Tamara Tereshina still works as a visiting nurse in the Belarus Red Cross Society and takes care of seriously ill people, lonely old people, trains new nurses and volunteers.
Nina Bliznyuk, Olga Geitseva, Isolde Semushina now have taken a well-deserved rest, but do not stay away from the work of the Red Cross and continue to share their experience with the Red Cross staff and volunteers.
How to support the Service
The need of the population of Belarus for medico-social assistance is very high. Every day the Belarus Red Cross receives dozens of appeals from those in need. Unfortunately, the resources of the Medico-Social Service of the Red Cross are limited. The Belarus Red Cross receives part of its funding from the budget within the framework of the state social contracting. Part of the funds comes from membership fees and voluntary donations.
In May 2018, the Belarus Red Cross and the "Imena" platform launched the project "Patronage service in the regions" to provide professional medical care to single elderly and seriously ill people in the regions that are practically excluded from health care.
Thanks to the donations of the "Imena" readers, 12 visiting nurses work in 11 Belarusian towns and villages, providing home care for 40 seriously ill people living alone.
These funds are also used to purchase equipment (tonometers, thermometers), consumables (medical gloves, antiseptics and disinfectants), sanitary clothes.
More about other options to support the medico-social service of the Red Cross "Dapamoha" – click here.
Together we can help more!