Every year, the isolated villages of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco wait with hopeful anticipation for the Solidarité Maroc medical caravan. Located near the town of Imilchil at elevations exceeding 2,300 meters, these villages do not have a permanent access to medical care, so the villagers must travel long distances to reach the nearest hospital.
The following is a letter from Dr. Samuel Abelson, an emergency medicine physician who lives in Minneapolis.
Four years ago, Project Medishare began teaching point-of-care ultrasound to the staff at Hospital Bernard Mevs in Port Au Prince. Through the Sonosite Global Health program, we have borrowed multiple loaner machines to use in teaching.
Every day, 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. 99% live in rural areas. Many of them could be prevented with proper maternal care including ultrasound imaging during their pregnancy and delivering in a medical clinic. Of those deaths, 40% are due to injuries or conditions related to placenta complications - and the only way to detect abnormal placenta challenges is through an ultrasound exam.
After spending five weeks working in an Ebola treatment unit, Dr Trish Henwood is going back for a second tour fighting Ebola in Africa.
Dr. David Johnsen is a diagnostic radiologist working with medical missions to the Dominican Republic. His team borrowed a Sonosite M-Turbo through Sonosite’s Global Loaner Program for a recent mission. Dr. Johnsen submitted this report of his experiences in the Caribbean country.
Trevor Dixon, MD, RDMS, is the Director of Emergency Ultrasound at Jacobi Medical Center in New York City and the founder and CEO of the JAHJAH Foundation (Jamaicans Abroad Helping Jamaicans At Home). Because of his specialty, Dr. Dixon is known as “The Ultrasound Guy.”
Dr. Carlye Jensen practices emergency and family medicine in Canada. She recently went on a mission for Ghana Rural Integrated Development (GRID), whose purpose is to provide basic medical care to the rural areas of northern Ghana, where many patients have no access to healthcare at all. Dr.
Dr. Jesus Casado Cerrada, Internist at the Hospital Universitario de Getafe and Professor at the Universidad Europea, Madrid, Spain, has travelled to the Rasuwa district of Nepal to help a local NGO rebuild the region’s infrastructure following a severe earthquake in 2015. Dr. Casado explains:
Dr. Megan Thùy Vũ is a global surgery resident at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. In addition to the five-year clinical general surgery program, she has two additional years dedicated to cross-training in other specialties, including point-of-care ultrasound, orthopedics, and OBGYN. Her professional interests include global pediatric surgery, trauma in combat and austere settings, and global surgical training and educational program development. Dr.