A message from the director, Alan Kelley, M.D.
Medical Teams Worldwide is a small non-profit medical relief organization started in 1998.
We provide two forms of medical relief:
First and foremost we send groups of 8-15 volunteers for 1-3 weeks to deliver medical care to the indigent in third world countries. We target people often missed by larger relief groups due to remote location, small size or other logistical barriers. We sometimes refer to these groups as The Last, the Lost and the Least.
The organization pursues 2-3 trips a year. On an average trip 1,000-2,000 people will be treated by our team. Our medical relief usually takes the form of primary medical care, immunizations and nutritional supplementation. Before each trip an assessment is made of targeted people so the relief provided is tailored to their needs.
Whenever possible, we combine our efforts with existing Christian (and non Christian) organizations already working in that area so as to augment ministries and not duplicate other efforts. We often bring more medical supplies than needed by the team and therefore donate them to the local health care provider if available. The countries that we have sent teams to include Haiti, Kenya, Nicaragua and Southern Sudan.
Our second form of medical relief involves helping facilitate the donation and installation of medical equipment to established health care providers in third world countries. For example, recently we provided a new $150,000 diagnostic ultrasound machine for a hospital in Kenya.
Some of our present projects are;
- Obtaining and installing a portable operating room for a doctor in Uganda.
- Building and sending a solar powered medical clinic to Kenya and southern Uganda.
- Sending a team to Western Kenya in the Summer of 2005.
As we have no salaried positions with our organization, our overhead costs are relatively low. Approximately $0.85/dollar goes to our work.
