Surfrider on wave

Music

07:57

Mentawai Islands

Williams: Clinging to the edge of Indonesia, the remote Mentawai Islands are the hottest new location for a booming global business.

08:17

Music

Williams: But while western surfers carve up these classic breaks, in some places on shore, many of the children don't live to five years old.

08:27

Jenkins

Jenkins: There's a very high infant mortality rate here. We know that in the worst areas, four out of six children will die.

08:39

Music

Boat party

Singing

09:04

Williams: New Zealand doctor, Dave Jenkins came to the Mentawais in search of good times and perfect waves. The blues playing surfer found both.

09:16

Music

Mentawai surf

Williams: Ten years ago, no one rode these waves. Now surfers come in their thousands, at hundreds of dollars a day on a flotilla of luxury boats.

09:33

It's expensive, but with uninterrupted Indian Ocean swells hitting the reefs to perfection, the Mentawais are now truly on the map as one of the great wave Meccas of the world.

09:41

Music

Jenkins in surf

Williams: Originally Dave took up surfing to escape the pressures of medical studies…

10:01

Then a high paying health job in Singapore. Surfing here was the ultimate getaway, until he stepped foot on land.

Jenkins

Jenkins: One morning I took my medical bag into the village after having a great surf and a great lunch, and we had an overwhelming response, literally children with malaria and families wasting away with tuberculosis, and a woman semiconscious brought to me in a wheelbarrow. And so we had a couple of burly surfers were fighting back the tears, and it was quite a major experience really.

10:19

It was that afternoon that I decided that I wouldn't be able to live with my conscience sailing away from people who were dying.

10:46

Music

Mentawai villagers in canoes

Williams: Largely forgotten by Indonesia's under resourced health authorities, the problems here are as a basic as they are deadly. Diseases the west has long left behind through simple immunisation.

10:59

Jenkins in boat

Jenkins: No one's really, in the Mentawai Islands, been able to source the exact causes of death, especially in these forest villages, where there are very high infant mortality rates. We're talking measles, polio, tetanus, tuberculosis and malaria. Those are the five…

11:20

Williams: They're actually killing kids up in this area.

11:42

Jenkins: Killing kids…

Williams: Dave has spent the past 18 months travelling through the islands, trying to determine the real health situation and work out a way to help.

11:44

Jenkins with villagers

Williams: But as soon as they hear there's a doctor in the village, they gather. This young girl suffers from a chronic infection that could easily turn septic and potentially deadly.

12:06

Jenkins: So for now it's patch up medicine, but at least it will relieve this little one here. She's probably really irritable, and you know, chronic, really nasty infection like that.

12:18

So what you'll do is make up a bowl of this medicine in one of our water bottles, and it will get them through til the nurse gets back and she'll need, all of them will need more antibiotics when the nurses get back from the clinic, from Muada, if they get back.

12:30

Jenkins with Susanna

Williams: Hidden away in their huts are some who are so sick they can barely walk.

12:54

Jenkins: Can you ask her to breathe in an out through her mouth.

13:01

Williams: Although hard to believe by looking at her, Susannah is just 29. The mother of four has been battling TB and now pneumonia while still breastfeeding her youngest child, a seven month old baby.

Jenkins: She has had tuberculosis and now I think she's got a rapid decline in that all her lungs have got infection. She's seriously, seriously ill, and at risk of dying.

13:25

Williams: The real tragedy is that Susannah's TB is treatable with a course of antibiotics that just aren't available here.

13:42

Jenkins: I don't know what percentage, but a very high percentage of these people have TB. So I mean we'll celebrate the day when the tuberculosis vaccine comes. But this is treatable.

13:50

Mentawai islander

Isolated and living largely as they have for centuries, the Mentawai islanders simply haven't been told about the basic hygiene that could save so many of their lives.

14:12

So lacking is basic treatment, people of all ages are dying unnecessarily.

14:31

Jenkins: It's probably the source of the tuberculosis.

14:38

Williams: But Dr. Dave has a plan. It's called Surf Aid, and its aim is simple. To tap the now booming surf industry for money to set up a local health network to move health care for these people beyond random acts of kindness.

Jenkins with patient

Jenkins: It's time to repay a debt of gratitude from surfing. There's a lot of money being made out there. There's a lot of corporate marketing. And I think that surfing can do this. I think it would be a fantastic thing for the Mentawai people, to be adequately funded, if you like, or given the gift of knowledge of how, from surfing. I like that idea.

14:59

Jenkins with Susanna

Jenkins: This medication will not cure her tuberculosis. She may feel better, tomorrow even. We'll come and check.

15:25

Drum music

Mentawai medicine men dancing

Williams: Surrounded by the symbols of their jungle spirits, Mentawai medicine men dance to 10,000 year old rhythms.

15:50

Drum music

Williams: Here the body is decorated to keep the soul from leaving. If it does, illness prevails, and the people turn to the forest herbs and secret spirit songs known only to these shaman.

16:00

But the onslaught of modern disease is overpowering the shaman's ancient knowledge, and even at times, themselves.

16:15

Jenkins with patient

Jenkins: He's got bronchitis in his whole lungs, and fluid on the bottom of his lungs. So he's got a mixed picture, and he's got chronic bronchitis from the smoking. He could well have a bit of tuberculosis, but his main problem is the bronchitis mixed with a little bit of heart failure, not too serious.

16:24

Williams: But these are not men blinded by their beliefs. They know they need help. And chief shaman Sigulo makes a simple plea.

16:45

Sigulo

Chief Shaman

Chief Shaman : We need education and medicine… so we can be as strong as people in the West.

16:52

Jenkins with Susanna

Williams: The next morning it's with some trepidation we return to check on the condition of Susanna.

17:22

Jenkins: She looks better to me today. A lot better. Which is amazing, considering it's 12 hours since we -- she's a bit better. She's been drinking. Makes so much difference. But as we told you yesterday, she was very close. So being a lot better is still seriously ill. Seriously sick.

I would still prefer her to be in hospital if at all possible. We still need to take her down to the clinic and get her on tuberculous drugs.

17:58

Williams: With as yet little funding, the costs of emergency treatment versus prevention make for hard decisions.

18:11

Jenkins

Jenkins: Well this is just a constant dilemma for us we increasingly face. Any village we go with the thought of introducing a preventative program like immunisation for children or malaria control, we face this problem, where there are always people who are seriously ill and at risk of dying. And the problem for us, we have so small resources we must make a call. And I can't walk away from this lady, so we have to do all we can for her.

18:20

It'll probably cost us 300, something like that, U.S. dollars to give her life. Now I could probably protect around 50 or 60 children from malaria for three years with an impregnated net for that, to reduce the intensity of their malaria. So these are really hard decisions, I wish I didn't have to make them. But you know, we're here to help, we can save this girl's life, this woman's life, and she's got four young children. So you know, we can't walk away from the situation.

18:49

Susanna in boat

Williams: So must come with us three hours downstream to her only hope -- a clinic with the drugs to save her life.

19:22

For subsistence farmers who earn little if any cash, it's a trip they normally just couldn't afford to make.

19:36

Williams: Some people might look at this and say well, you know, this is all very well and you're very well meaning, but isn't it up to the government, isn't it up to other people, isn't there a structure here to take care of these people?

19:50

Jenkins: You could say that about the world. We're here to pay a debt of gratitude to the Mentawai people for using of their reefs and waterways, and we're trying to -- and we're achieving -- to do that in a structured professional way.

20:00

Mentawai surf

Music

20:16

Williams: Back on the coast, some of the world's richest surfers catch their dream waves. Most are totally unaware of the health crisis just a few metres away on shore. But some want the surf industry to do more.

Surfer

Surfer: I would like to see that a percentage of the boat fare goes to the economy here, to helping the people with medicine.

20:38

Williams: So far, Surf Aid has received only a couple of donations from surfing corporates. The 30 boats now operating here earn millions of dollars from international surfers, and to date, funding a medical charity has not been a priority.

20:50

Jenkins

Williams: Do you think surfing as a industry and surfers generally, have a social conscience? Do you think that's what you're battling against?

21:07

Jenkins: I think partly. Surfing is a -- they're a very mixed bunch of people. I think surfing started as a sort of soulful thing you did with your mates. And it's quite clearly become a major industry. But if you look within the industry, there are people who started in a garage and started in a van, and they're good people, and they, you know, they've been creative, they've worked hard, and I'll be surprised if they don't want to be part of this. They're certainly welcome to be part of it.

21:15

Jenkins in village

Williams: But while he waits for the surfing industry to see the light, Dave plies his barefoot doctoring where he can. And not just with treatment. He's also trying to set up programs of preventative health care.

21:44

Jenkins: How's it been going? I won't kiss you...

21:58

Williams: In villages like Talaleho, Surf Aid has teamed up with Indonesia's malaria control board.

22:07

The aim, to first find out the numbers of children with the malaria parasite in their blood.

And the news from this village is typically grim. Eighty percent of the children here have malaria, making this one of the worst places in the world for the debilitating disease.

22:22

Jenkins with patient

Jenkins: And also, some of these kids get very anaemic from the malaria, like I say it blows up their red cells. So we check for anaemia. This is a real problem. See his anaemia. See, look how much blood I've got circulating round in my -- look how pale his hand is compared to mine. So he hasn't got -- his red cells have been blown up by the malaria parasite. What happens is -- there are different types of malaria -- but this is typical. They get anaemic, then they get another infection, perhaps a chest infection and they get a pneumonia, and they die.

22:40

Villagers on surfboards

Williams: For just a few dollars each, Dave could install enough mosquito nets to prevent much of the malaria crippling these children. And for a small fraction of the surf industry's profits, this surfing Samaritan could immunise many of the children here against unnecessary deaths.

23:15

Jenkins

Jenkins: We're at a very critical crossover point now. We're really, as you saw, we're rolling out our programs and we've a couple of thousand kids immunised this year, and there'll be a drastic reduction in malaria in that village in the next 12 months as a result. But we'd like them to join in.

23:34

I think this would be a fantastic thing for people to be involved in.

Jenkins with boy

Williams: An optimist with a clear commitment to his Hippocratic oath, Dave really believes even one act of giving can make a difference.

23:58

He just wants a few others to help out.

Jenkins: Okay, that's yours, my friend. You are the harmonica player.

Woman: Thank you.

24:15

Credits:

Surfin Samaritan

Reporter: Evan Williams

Camera: Geoffrey Lye

Editor: Stuart Miller

Producer: Nick Greenaway

Extra footage: Rip Curl

24:31