Project HOPE Now Recruiting Volunteers for South Africa

Project HOPE is recruiting volunteers for a land-based mission in South Africa from October 10-26, 2009. This pilot volunteer program will focus on chronic disease assessment in two urban slums in the vicinity of Johannesburg. Learn More

Health Education in Tonga Successful

Project HOPE volunteer John Hammill reflects on successful work in Tonga:

The Tongan clinic was a huge success. Because we worked with the hospital staff on a daily basis, we have left a more lasting impact on the Tongan healthcare system than we did at any other site. At the close of our clinic I had a very candid and open conversation with the head physician and director of Niu’ui Hospital. He was moved almost to tears as he described his gratitude. In reference to an old proverb he said “You taught us to fish.”

This is what has made this clinic so successful. The medicines and equipment we left behind were nice, but the sustainability of our work will come from the knowledge we exchanged.

The Niu'ui Hospital in Ha'apai Tonga

Project HOPE volunteers and team in Samoa

Meet the Project HOPE Volunteers for Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Western Samoa

HOPE volunteers from Shenandoah University participate in Pacific Partnership 2009

Four volunteers from the Shenandoah University Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy in Winchester, Virginia are working aboard the USNS Richard E. Byrd and on shore on a four-month humanitarian assistance and health education mission in Southeast Asia. The volunteers are serving patients in the remote Oceania nations of Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Western Samoa. Read the Press Release

Stephen Creasy is currently attending Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia to obtain his Doctor of Pharmacy in 2010. The first-time Project HOPE volunteer works at CVS/Caremark Pharmacy in Winchester. Onboard the USNS Byrd and ashore, Stephen is using his pharmacy skills to help people in Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands.



John Hammill a pharmacy intern currently enrolled in Shenandoah University is a first-time Project HOPE volunteer. John is working aboard the USNS Byrd and ashore in Tonga and Western Samoa.





Dr. Alla Marks, a pharmacist with more than 20-years of experience is an Associate Professor at Shenandoah University, Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy in Winchester, Virginia. A first-time Project HOPE volunteer, Alla will serve on the USNS Byrd and ashore in Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands.



John Nett is a pharmacist with 15 years of experience including a 24-year career as an active duty Air Force officer. A first-time Project HOPE volunteer from Williamsburg, Virginia, John is working aboard the USNS Byrd and ashore in Tonga and Western Samoa.





ALSO...

Elizabeth Johnson, Doctor of Pharmacy Candidate at Shenandoah University recently completed a volunteer mission onboard the USNS Comfort, visiting El Salvador and Nicaragua. Read about her experience in her own words.

Project HOPE Volunteers Complete Latin America Mission

More than 90 Project HOPE volunteers completed a nearly 4-month mission providing humanitarian and health education in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Antigua, Panama, Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

While the final numbers have not yet been calculated, volunteers and their military and other NGO counterparts:

Treated more than 80,000 patients

Performed more than 1,100 surgeries

Participated in more than 37,000 educational encounters

Delivered $1.2 million in medicines and medical supplies

But numbers never tell the real story. We hope you have enjoyed reading the numerous stories of lives changed through medical care.

The Continuing Promise 2009 mission is complete, but HOPE volunteers are now serving on the other side of the world in Southeast Asia, helping those in need in the remote Oceania nations of Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Western Samoa. Four pharmacy volunteers from Shenandoah University Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy in Winchester, Virginia are working aboard the USNS Richard E. Byrd on the four-month humanitarian assistance and health education mission. Check back as we continue to document Project HOPE volunteers as they work around the world...

...and please support our dedicated medical volunteers.

Pharmacy Student Blogs About Project HOPE Volunteer Experience

Elizabeth Johnson is a Doctor of Pharmacy Candidate at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. A first time volunteer for Project HOPE, Beth worked as a pharmacy technician onboard the USNS Comfort. Read about her experience in El Salvador and Nicaragua in her own words.

HOPE Comes Full Circle in Latin America

LTJG Hussein Rawji transported Project HOPE volunteers from the USNS Comfort to their medical worksites in Nicaragua. Forty years ago, his mother-in- law joined HOPE volunteers onboard the SS HOPE as part of the local medical community that helped volunteers deliver primary care and distribute the donated medical supplies in Corinto, Nicaragua.

Read his story

Medical Care and Community Service

Medicine isn’t the only thing the Project HOPE volunteers practice during the Continuing Promise mission. Along with their Navy counterparts, our volunteers have completed about three community service projects in each of the seven countries we’ve visited this year on USNS Comfort.

Today, HOPE volunteer Elizabeth Roughead and I visited the Santa Eduvigis retirement home with a dozen or so Navy, Army, Air Force, and other NGO volunteers to fix their gutters, install a drainage ditch, generally clean up the outdoors areas, and—maybe most importantly—visit with the folks living there.

This service project, and others like it, which the Navy calls “COMREL” projects—Navy shorthand for “Community Service”—is just one of the events that Elizabeth has participated in during Continuing Promise. As a volunteer administrative assistant, she has rotated through each department onboard USNS Comfort, the Navy’s hospital ship and base of operations for the deployment.

“Its really a great experience, because I get to see a little of what everyone onboard does,” says Elizabeth. “When I heard that the Navy was shifting towards these type of cooperative deployments, I knew I had to get involved in some way. I have biology degree, but no medical background, so I help out wherever I’m needed…and there’s a lot to do.”

Elizabeth, whose father is Adm. Gary Roughead, the Navy’s top admiral, has had her finger on the pulse of the Navy’s humanitarian missions since 2005, when Project HOPE, the Navy, and other NGO’s pulled together for the first time to support the relief effort for the tsunami in Southeast Asia.

“Being able to come out and give back something that I know actually helps people—health care—has really made me glad to have done this,” says Elizabeth. “When you see someone’s life change overnight, like I have when I was working with the doctors and nurses in the OR and the post-op wards, makes it all worth it.”

Thanks for reading-Jacob

Mother Drives Her Son Across Two Countries to Get Care

Another awesome story is this little boy, Oscar. He and his mother are actually Salvadoran. He’s got strabismus (wandering eye), and his mother brought him to one of the sites in El Salvador late in the stay last week. Late enough that we were able to do a work up for him, but not able to get him into one of the ORs—they had all been booked for some time.

So she asked, “Where are you going next?” We told her, and with a simple, “Ok,” she left...Only to show up at the site in Chinandega, Nicaragua, on the first day it was open, paperwork in hand. She’d driven him across two countries just to see us. The ORs were wide open. With that drive, she’d changed the course of her son’s life. He was operated on today, and as the muscles in his eyes get used to their new positions, they will line up as they should.

Thanks for reading-Jacob

Volunteers Help Restore Health and Lives

The best part of today was checking in on all of the patients from the last two days. I’ve been following the case of Sixto Lopez since he came to the screening site three days ago. A 61-year-old man, his job is “working with the machete” –a field worker, but he was very specific that he didn’t cut cane. Maize and sorghum (I believe I got my plant terminology correct) are his specialty.

His son and grandson are also fieldworkers in the same line of work. Sixto has not been able to work for several months, however, because the scar from an old gallbladder removal has herniated, forcing him out of the fields. His family has been suffering without the extra income—so much so that neither his son nor grandson could afford the time off from work, so his granddaughter-in-law, his grandson’s wife, came with him on escort duty.

I saw him again last night in the Hotel, where Project HOPE volunteer Doctor Bob gave a final exam just to make sure of the morning’s work (see photo). His granddaughter, Nicoleta, is just as shy as the rest of the Nicaraguan women I’ve met—but very friendly once they smile and open up to a conversation.

Today was Sixto’s surgery, and everything went “swimmingly,” as Doctor Bob would say in his best faux-Monty Python. I gather that that means, “very good.”

I caught back up with Sixto and Nicoleta in the Post-op ward after the surgery, but Sixto was indisposed to the photo op. I took this of Nicoleta and me instead. That’s a huge smile for the photo, for a stoic Nicaraguan.

Check back tomorrow for another heartwarming patient story. And as always, thanks for reading-Jacob