Sutures Are A Human Right!

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

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.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Medifree Dresses

Beautiful girls!

Monday, September 21, 2009

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.