Health
Doctors Withour Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)
WWW.DOCTORSWITHOUTBORDERS.ORG volunteer field
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an
independent international medical humanitarian organization that
delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict,
epidemics, natural or man-made disasters, or exclusion from
health care in nearly 60 countries. MSF recruits doctors,
nurses, logisticians, water-and-sanitation experts,
administrators, and other medical and non-medical personnel to
provide medical care to people in crisis. If selected for MSF's
pool of field aid workers, you will join a group of
professionals who deliver lifesaving treatment to many of the
most vulnerable people in the world: victims of conflict,
refugees, internally displaced persons, and people living with
diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. For more information on
working in the field with MSF, please visit
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/volunteer/field/
Health Volunteers Overseas
www.hvousa.org
Health Volunteers Overseas (HVO) is
a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving
global health through education. For the past two decades, HVO
has worked to increase health care access in developing
countries through clinical training and education programs in
child health, primary care, trauma and rehabilitation,
essential surgical care, oral health, infectious disease,
nursing education, wound care and burn management. HVO recruits
health care professional to volunteer there time and expertise
in order to train, mentor and provide critical professional
support to health care providers in more than 25 resource-poor
nations, covering Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America
and the Caribbean. HVO volunteers typically serve at a program
site for one month, but there are many sites where one may
serve for two weeks. Longer placements are also possible if a
volunteer has the time available. For more information about
HVO, visit the web site.
International Medical Corps
www.imcworldwide.org
International Medical Corps is
a global humanitarian nonprofit organization dedicated to
saving lives and relieving suffering through health care
training and relief and development programs. Established in
1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses, IMC is a private,
voluntary, nonpolitical, nonsectarian organization. Its mission
is to improve the quality of life through health interventions
and related activities that build local capacity in areas
worldwide. By offering training and health care to local
populations and medical assistance to people at highest risk,
and with the flexibility to respond rapidly to emergency
situations, IMC rehabilitates devastated health care systems
and helps bring them back to self-reliance.
Mission Doctors Association (faith-based)
www.missiondoctors.org
Founded by Msgr. Anthony
Brouwers in 1959, Mission Doctors Association is the only
program in the United States exclusively dedicated to
recruiting, training, sending and supporting Catholic doctors
and their families to serve at mission hospitals and clinics
around the world. Doctors and their families may serve on both
short and long term assignments.
Unite For Sight
www.uniteforsight.org
Unite For Sight (www.uniteforsight.org/intl_volunteer)
volunteers participate in hands-on clinical service while
assisting eye doctors in rural villages, refugee camps, and
slums. Volunteers are immersed in international health and
development programs while providing eye care to patients
living in extreme poverty. The goal of Unite For Sight and
its partner eye clinics and communities is to create eye
disease-free communities. Unite For Sight's volunteers
(local and visiting) work with partner eye clinics to
provide eye care in communities without previous access. The
eye clinic's eye doctors and Unite For Sight volunteers
jointly provide community-based screening programs in rural
villages. The clinic's eye doctors diagnose and treat eye
disease in the field, and surgical patients are brought to
the eye clinic for surgery. Patients receive free surgery
funded by Unite For Sight so that no patient remains blind
due to lack of funds. Volunteers immediately see the joy on
patients' faces when their sight is restored after years of
blindness. These memories last a lifetime. While helping the
community, volunteers are in a position to witness and draw
their own conclusions about the failures and inequities of
global health systems. It broadens their view of what works,
and what role they can have to insure a health system that
works for everyone and that leaves no person blind in the
future.