WELCOME!

Welcome to the blog for http://www.medifree.org/, an organization whose mission it is to secure medical supplies for small, on-the-ground providers of care.

Every human being, no matter who they are or where they live, has the right to sutures. And of course, we are using sutures to symbolize all the medical needs that human beings have.

Here are two doctors, whose words have inspired us to take up the challenge of 'doing more.' --

" 'More' is to feel responsible when our sisters in poor countries die because their human rights did not include sutures."
Dr. Tarek Maguid, Lilongwe, Malawi

"When we can discuss solemnly the 'right to sutures' even as we discuss gender inequality and torture, we will have succeeded in shifting the agenda in a way that makes sense to the world's poor and marginalized. This should be the goal of the health and human rights movement in the 21st century. "
Dr. Paul Farmer, Partners in Health
(http://www.pih.org/)

Please consider contributing to the organizations we assist, or directly to Medifree to help us give where we feel the need is greatest and the resources least available.

If you have no money to give: "Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are."
(Nkosi Johnson, 12 year old Zulu boy, who lived with AIDS).

You may contact us by commenting on a post or by sending us an email at sutures1@live.com. Our snail mail address is P.O. Box 51334, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49005 USA, and our telephone number is 269 384-5755. We look forward to hearing from you!


Let us "preach the truth as if we had a million voices, for it is silence that kills the world."
-- St. Catherine of Sienna









Sunday, December 12, 2010

Thanks Again, Global Links!



Global Links has sent more than 200 sutures to Mike Ursiny (www.MikeUrsiny.com) here in the States to be taken onward to Cameroon in support of the work of Dr. Georges Bwelle. You can listen to NPR's "The Story" about this amazing doctor; it aired in October and you can go to http://www.thestory.org/, and click on "archives" to find it. Or check out Dr. Bwelle's website, http://www.ascovime.fr/.
Medifree has also donated spinal needles and 12 boxes of iodine swabsticks, which were donated by Med-Eq. Both Global Links and Med-Eq take excess medical supplies and 're-gift' them to needy health-care providers. And both organizations can use your support!





Learn more about Dr. Bwelle

Learn more about Dr. Bwelle by clicking here.

Monday, August 9, 2010

ooh baby!


Here's a new batch of beanie hats ready to go to Partners in Health for distribution in Rwanda. www.hotheadknitters.blogspot.com. Not a boring pastel in the lot!

Medifree has also sent eight metal speculums to Free Burma Rangers, so the medics can better serve women, but thankfully we will not be posting a photo of these instruments. Ouch.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Sutures for Chechnya


Global Links has again come through with donated sutures, this time for Dr. Khassan Baiev's work in Chechnya. The children there suffer so much, and have mostly been forgotten by the world. Check him out on You Tube.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Beanies for Rwandan Babies


Like to knit or crochet? Check out http://www.hotheadknitters.blogspot.com/.

Here you will find out how to keep Rwandan newborns (and babies at other places where Partners in Health works) warm and healthy.

Medifree has sent this small donation of homemade hats and pillowcase dresses.

Free Burma Rangers


These cuties are Karen refugee children, participating in a demonstration on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Medifree is sending 8 vaginal speculums to Free Burma Rangers, a brave group of travelling medics. If you haven't done so yet, please check out their website.

Recommended reading: A Land Without Evil: Stopping the Genocide of Burma's Karen People by Benedict Rogers.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Iraqi Health Now



Medifree was able to provide Iraqi Health Now (http://www.iraqihealthnow.org/) with 70 spinal needles, which have been urgently requested by the Children's Welfare Teaching Hospital in Baghdad. It is only a very small amount compared to the need, so we are looking for more.








Monday, February 22, 2010

At her Thai border clinic, Cynthia Maung treats victims of war from her native Burma

At her Thai border clinic, Cynthia Maung treats victims of war from her native Burma

Posted using ShareThis

Medical Advocacy Team


Amazingly, I have forgotten to mention, let alone link to, the wonderful folks at MAT! Please check them out at http://www.medicaladvocacyteam.blogspot.com/. Medifree has helped out in small ways over the past year or so.

This photo is of Ugandan boys so very happy because their orphanage just got a load of mosquito nets and food, including fresh fruit that can double as a hat! It's impossible to read the posts about this orphanage without tears. So please read, cry, and do something to help!

Prosthesis at last!


Medifree partnered with the local Baptist Church to take care of the co-payment so this young Karen woman could get her first prosthesis. She has lived since birth without half a right arm.
Amazingly, she has been working at a meatpacking plant, heaving fat into a bin above her head, using her left arm only. Imagine doing that repetitive motion for eight hours a day, five, sometimes six, days a week.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Global Links Donation


Here are some baby clothes and a handmade preemie hat being packed up to send to Global Links' New Mother-Baby Collection Drive. Check them out at http://www.globallinks.org/. They are the wonderful folks who send us sutures which we pass on to clinics in Haiti and Burma.