Baby Clothes!

Father Wayne Dziekan from Graylord Michigan recently visited Casa Materna in Nicaragua, and took some baby gifts and some little girl dresses, plus a beautiful quilt. The plan was to distribute them on Easter.

Please check out www.casamaterna.org, which serves women with high-risk pregnancies in rural Nicaragua.

How about giving a donation for Mother's Day this year??

Read This! from Dokte Paul

5 Lessons From Haiti's Disaster - By Paul Farmer Foreign Policy

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Medifree Dresses

Beautiful girls!

St. Vincent's Center for Handicapped Children, Port au Prince

http://www.vnews.com/08292009/5957400.htm

Please take the time to read this newspaper article about two women in New Hampshire who are raising funds (through a quilt raffle) to buy braillers for blind children in Haiti. St. Vincent's is "struggling just to keep the doors open, much less meet the needs of the children in its care."
Medifree has sent them a brailler, as well as two recorders, since they are also collecting musical instruments.

Davis Zachary

Global Links' gift of sutures was delivered, as planned, to Zach. He gave a presentation on his family's work in Haiti, and urged his audience to indulge in "dangerous prayer." As you can see, he worked up quite a sweat during the evening.

Packing Up!

Tomorrow we're catching up with Davis Zachary from Real Hope for Haiti at the Town Hall in Vandalia Michigan to deliver these goodies, and listen to his talk.
Thanks, once again, to Global Links (www.globallinks.org) for another 250 sutures! The backpack is stuffed with more pillowcase dresses, and a few other useful odds and ends.
Zach is currently readying a semi trailer to ship to Haiti, so please check out http://www.haitirescuecenter.wordpress.com/ to see how you can contribute.

Free Burma Rangers

Thanks to Global Links (for a gift of 200 assorted sutures), Med-Eq for providing spinal and Touhy needles, and our volunteer seamstress who, it seems, is addicted to making little girls' dresses out of pillowcases, we were able to send a small box of donations to Free Burma Rangers. These indomitably brave folks operate at the Thai-Burma border and provide medical and spiritual assistance for Karen and other minority peoples in Burma.

Not Exactly Medical Supplies, but......

still a necessary part of life. Our local homeless and drop-in shelter, where people can get a shower and do their laundry, as well as have a meal and make phone calls, all for free, is totally out of hygiene items. So Medifree has donated a bag 'o shampoo just as a small reminder that there are hungry, tired, dirty, lonely people in our hometowns as well as overseas.

CerviScope

Check it out at www.familyhm.org/PortableColposcopy.pdf.

The CerviScope is a portable colposcope which will allow many women in developing countries to be screened for cervical cancer, and will help save lives.

Medifree is pleased to sponsor a CerviScope for Dr. Tarek Meguid. His writing about his work in Malawi with women, along with Paul Farmer's work, inspired the creation of Medifree, so this is a return gift.

Thanks to Family Health Ministries (especially Dr. David Walmer, Kathy Walmer, and Jaqueline Ndirangu) for making this possible!