Susan Bishop and her late husband, Ray, first visited Bali in 1989. In 2010 Sue and Ray left Australia and moved to an area close to Lovina in Bali. After a couple of snorkelling weekends in Amed, another, more daring, dream took hold – a clinic that would provide consistent health care in an area where people had no access without traveling far from their villages.
The clinic in East Bali is located in arid Karangasem Regency, the poorest area on the island. Between 300,000 to 400,000 people live on the slopes of an active volcano with a lack of passable roads, access to water, basic education, and basic medical care. Susan used her fundraising skills to kick start Yayasan Bali Sehat. She used pop-up clinics and staffed them with doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. Her small clinic used 266 volunteers to treat 1,156 patients with dental needs, eye problems, women’s health and so on.
Susan ran her own fundraising ventures across the island until 2014 when benefactors funded a larger, permanent clinic, Klinik Pratama Bali Sehat, with capacity for 23 patients. The clinic opened in June this year. The clinic is staffed with qualified, local Balinese and set up for the future with a board comprising both Indonesians and Australians.