September: Durham, NC, USA
Nursing Students Without Borders is a global health interest group at the Duke University School of Nursing. They are running a campaign to put together ~200 first aid kits for Burmese refugees that live in Durham. With the help of 5 nursing student volunteers, REMEDY contributed tape, bandage and other dressing supplies and gloves for this project.
August: Guatemala City, GUATEMALA
For the second year, Henry Rice, MD and Megan Maloney, NP from Duke led a group of Duke health care providers to perform pediatric surgeries and other medical care to children in Guatemala, under the auspices of The Shalom Foundation. The Foundation is a faith-based, non-profit organization dedicated to providing financial support and physical assistance to under-privileged children and their families.
August: Camiri, BOLIVIA
Victoria Rendell, a third year Duke medical student, brought needed obstetric supplies to Hospital Municipal de Camiri for use in the diagnosis of congenital Chagas disease transmission. This allows for the early recognition and treatment of infected children who would otherwise not be identified with this disorder.
August: Ntagacha, TANZANIA
The Office of Global and Community Health Initiatives (OGACHI) at the Duke School of Nursing is working with Team Ministries International/Teamwork City of Hope (TCOH), a faith-based NGO working in remote areas of rural Tanzania. Among other projects, TCOH operates a rural health center in Ntagacha. Dorothy Powell, director of Duke OGACHI, coordinated the shipment of needed medical supplies to this clinic.
August: VIETNAM
Jeni Hauver is a Duke nurse who traveled to Vietnam with the Global Community Service Foundation. The Foundation supports communities in Southeast Asia to empower themselves through sustainable healthcare, education and income generation programs. The purpose of Jeni’s trip was to teach skills health care skills to workers at an orphanage that has 78 children with or affected by AIDS.
July: NIGERIA
Folu Moses is an accountant in Duke Hospital Materials Services who volunteers as a local coordinator for African Missions- North America (AMNA). AMNA works to rebuild the lives of widows, orphans and others afflicted by in a variety of diseases in areas in Africa. REMEDY worked with Folu to coordinate a large shipment of medical supplies to support a series of free clinics being established in underserved areas of Nigeria.
May: Mityana, UGANDA
Four Duke undergraduates spent 2 months in Mityana, Uganda as part of the Duke Global Health Institute’s Student Research Training Program. This is an intensive experiential learning program that engages second and third year undergraduate students in the development, implementation and assessment of a community-based project. Students have the opportunity to work on issues ranging from infant mortality to health care mapping to access to care for migrant populations and HIV/AIDS and substance abuse issues. The four students worked with their faculty director, Dr. Christopher Kigongo, a Ugandan physician and Duke researcher, and a community partner to employ the skills learned in the classroom.
As part of their community involvement, the group brought needed supplies to the local hospital in Mityana.
May: Huehuetenango, GUATEMALA
Roxana Martinez is a Duke student who brought supplies to support her research at the Duke Global Health Institute’s Guatemala Global Health Student Training Site in Jacaltenango and Concepcion Huista, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Her research focused on traditional herbal therapies and their impact on morbidity and mortality in the Western Highlands of Guatemala.
The Mayan indigenous population in Guatemala has faced an array of health disparities stemming in part from a 36-year long civil war as well as rural isolation, cultural and linguistic divergences, few educational opportunities, and little access to modern health care. This population is dependent on herbal medicines, but knowledge of herbal therapies varies greatly throughout these communities. Under the supervision of the GHI’s partner program, CODECH, students interviewed health promoters, lay people, midwives, herbalists and other traditional healers to identify commonly used herbs and beliefs regarding their usage.
May: Guanajuato, MEXICO
Proyecto Puentes de Salud is a student-driven health organization which serves the Hispanic/Latino population of North Carolina. The goal of Proyecto Puentes de Salud is to ameliorate health care inequalities by providing needed health care services to Latino communities in both NC and in Mexico, and also to conduct meaningful research that will inform effective intervention programs in the future.
Gisselle Mani is a UNC student who helped deliver needed health care supplies to San Miguel de Allende and Juventino Rosas in Guanajuato.
May: El Porvenir, HONDURAS
Each year several Duke undergraduates volunteer with Project HEAL, a health education and awareness organization that has worked in Honduras for the last 5 years. By teaching in kindergartens, schools and clinics in the community, they aim to develop a sustainable project with a goal of empowering the local population to take charge of their own health. The group brings health care supplies to support various health education project.
April: Nairobi, KENYA
Africa Rising is a public charity whose mission is to build relationships with effective grassroots African organizations. Africa Rising has partnered with a Kenyan NGO, Beacon of Hope, to assist in its efforts to maintain a comprehensive health center in an at-risk area in the slums near Nairobi. The clinic was founded in 2002 primarily to serve those infected with and affected by HIV. However, due to the stigma associated with HIV they enlarged their scope to include all members of the community, regardless of their HIV status. Now they serve approximately 40,000 patients each year, both in the health center and in designated medical fairs to outlying areas.
Donald Ellis is a Duke pediatrician who joined a team of other medical professionals from the US and Kenya to bring supplies and to work in the clinic over a period of two weeks in July.
April: Manila, PHILIPPINES
Dr. Andrew Lodge is a Duke pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon who is volunteering with a group to perform open heart surgery on underpriveleged children at the Philippines Children’s Medical Center. This is the first of what is anticipated to be an annual mission to repair congenital heart defects in children and to educate the local medial team.
March: Project C.U.R.E.
Although REMEDY at Duke tries to support as many Duke-affiliated and local area global health projects as we can, we currently collect more surplus medical supplies than we can donate locally. Since we are an unfunded, all-volunteer program, we have no ability to ship supplies and so have relied entirely on individuals and groups to pick up and transport from Durham.
In an effort to get these supplies to where they are needed, REMEDY at Duke will now also be partnering with Project C.U.R.E., a non-profit based in Colorado that does surplus medical supply collections and overseas donations on a large scale. They have a well-developed collections and shipping network throughout the country, and have have a system for ensuring that the supplies are suitable for and sustainable in the recipient sites they work with. For more information about Project C.U.R.E. and where they are working, go to their website at: http://www.projectcure.org/
On March 18, REMEDY at Duke donated a Wal-Mart tractor trailer load of supplies, to Project C.U.R.E. We partnered with UNC MEDWorld with this shipment to send a total of 24 shipping pallets of supplies consisting of 879 cartons (720 from Duke) The estimated wholesale value of these items was over $600,000!
March: Machame, TANZANIA
Many Duke medical and and physician assistant students elect to do clinical rotations abroad in medically underserved areas. REMEDY at Duke supports many of these students with medical supplies for their clinical sites.
Cameron Collins is a 2nd-year Duke PA student who spent a month in Machame, Tanzania at the Machame Luthern Hospital, which is funded largely through non-profit organizations.
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TOTAL VOLUNTEER HOURS: 252
