A family has arrived in Helena from the Democratic Republic of the Congo after 25 years in a Tanzanian refugee camp. This is a family of 10 with a grandmother, mother and dad and seven children between two and 17. The Congolese family has already been granted asylum, vetted by the U.S. State Department, Homeland Security, and [...]
There is a shortage of medical care here as all the hospitals were destroyed. Woah … it is so hot today! It will be 97. The mosquitos are bad. We all have bites all over us. We are about halfway through our Türkiye commitment for team 1. Team 2 arrives Oct 6 and I leave for [...]
Extraordinary ways people are helping people Imagine having severe physical disabilities and because of the invasion you are making the decision to leave family and country with the likelihood you may never see them again. Crossing the border from Poland into Ukraine we met Lucas (lives in Poland near German border), Paulina (Ukrainian living in Poland) [...]
The immensity of the tasks to recovery will take years and are overwhelming. We started in another Syrian camp where there is a lot of healthcare needs and the police came and told us to leave. We still seem to not have permission to help the neediest - which are the Syrian refugees. We packed up and [...]
SETTING UP IN TURKEYThe Middle East is in turmoil: earthquake in Morrocco , floods in Libya. It has changed our plans a bit as medical first response teams in Turkey needed to leave for those new disaster zones. Our team split up. Hands On Global has sent three people to deliver supplies in Ukraine and then [...]
UKRAINE CONFLICT This morning I was on my own in Lviv, a large urban city in the Ukraine. It feels no different like being in a city center like San Francisco, Budapest, Vienna, Hamburg, etc. I’m thankful we have a place to stay in the city center as it is so easy to be just another [...]
UKRAINE CONFILCT Reflections on walking through a cemetery of fresh graves of Ukrainian soldiers.We did not start out looking for this place. Had we known we were going to come across it, we might have shied away. We just walked around a corner and there it was - we were shocked, yet drawn in. A mixture [...]
UKRAINE CONFILCT Spent the day visiting patients. Many are far from families. We brought oranges and chocolate, massaged some hands and toes. We joked and chatted through a translator and hope we eased some of the pain or at least provided a distraction. Some were clearly in a lot of discomfort. Pain is treated with ibuprofen. [...]
UKRAINE CONFILCT Today we met the war. We drove to Zytomyr to deliver ortho supplies to a clinic. On the two hour drive we passed bombed out buildings, houses, bridges. In the town we saw the school, apartment buildings, houses and hospital that were hit by missiles.The hospital that is still standing has many complex patients, [...]
UKRAINE CONFILCT The Protez Prosthetic Center is a joint project with two brothers, both Ukrainian, one living in Minnesota, the other here in Mukachevo. There are over 15,000 amputees and they need prosthetic limbs to heal. This organization has brought over 30 patients to the USA for complex prosthetics . There are over 750 on the [...]
