PROFILE OF FAMILIES
                       
The pilot areas of Project Margarita are the Aeta settlements of Alunan, Dalayapin, Doray, Kalangitan, Patalbato, Pinya, Tarucan and Yeyang. As of 2002, these eights settlements have a total of 960 households or a total population of 5,106 Aetas. If the Philippine annual birth rate of 3.2%, then the estimated total population of these five target settlements in 2004 is 5,400 out of which a minimum estimate of 500 are pregnant Aeta women and 400 are children with ages 0 to 5 years. These are the projected number of Aeta indigenous peoples that Project Margarita expects to have long-term health and development impact on.

The Aeta tribes in Tarlac live in extreme conditions of poverty. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo Volcano, has critically destroyed their hunting and fishing grounds, wiped out their sources of daily sustenance, and led to starvation and epidemic outbreaks. Relying on available vegetation for their sustenance, the Aetas' food intake and quality do not meet the required minimum caloric and nutritional needs, thus adversely affecting the health conditions of the tribal members, specially the pregnant and lactating women and the children. Consequently, the intellectual and physical potential of the Aetas are stunted.

There is also a high rate of illiteracy; almost all of them have not gone to school and could not read or write. High rate of illiteracy also gives rise to the absence of preventive health care knowledge and skills and health-seeking behaviors. Furthermore, childbirths are not registered with the local civil registry hence majority of the Aetas do not have legal identity and status.

Illiterate and without legal standing, many of them are easily exploited by Filipinos in the lowland. Nor do the Aeta tribes claim ownership of lands because of their nomadic way of life. Majority live in temporary, makeshift dwellings made of bamboo for walls and grass for roofing. Others live under the trees. There are also cases where lowland Filipinos have gradually claimed and titled in their names the territorial domains of the Aetas’ ancestors.

Due to their nomadic and itinerant way of life, the delivery of basic health services has been difficult for many years. Compounding the situation are the Aetas’ geographical distance from municipal health resources, inclement weather, and the deficiencies in the current health care system. At present, the government units require the assistance of the military to gather the Aetas at the lowland health centers.

With the sources of their food for survival wiped out, landless, homeless, illiterate and without legal identity, the Aetas consequently have no access to just about everything and certainly marginalized. The Aetas are sent to a downward spiral of poverty and disease, illness and death, as summed up by an Elder, Manu Subalet, “…little by little our tribes are dying and we are destined to disappear from the earth.”