Improving the Health of Tibetan Refugees

Summary

Provide containers/medical supplies for essential oils that are used topically to treat disease and infection within a refugee clinic in India for 380 families and over 200 orphaned Tibetan children.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

The Bon are a minority Tibetan ethnic group that fled to India when the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959. They established a community in Dolanji, India on donated land. Today, 80 Bon families, 200-300 Indian families, and several hundred orphaned children live in Dolanji, India and rely on the clinic at the Yung Drung Bon Monastic Center for free health care. Survival is difficult in this remote area and these poor families have limited access to other health care facilities.

How will this project solve this problem?

Clinic staff has found that essential oils are an effective complement to traditional Tibetan and western medical practices and can be used successfully to treat disease. Essential oils and bottles are needed to re-stock dwindling supplies

Potential Long Term Impact

The oils will provide needed medicine to poor people in Dolanji to relieve their sickness. In the future, clinic staff hopes to explore making these oils on site and selling them for income to support the clinic and this Tibetan community in exile.

Project Message

This project makes sure that the clinic will get the maximum medicinal use out of these donated oils, meeting the health needs of hundreds of children, men, and women.
- Toc Dunlap, Executive Director, Creating Hope International

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).

Resources