Combat Health Disparities for Kachin Women (2)

Dear donors,

Before any updates, we at GlobeMed at Dartmouth wanted to take a moment to thank those who donated to our annual Holiday Season Individual Givings campaign. We raised over $2000 for our partner organization, the Kachin Women's Association Thailand (KWAT). This fundraiser makes up so much of our annual contributions to KWAT, and both of our organizations truly appreciate your generous donations from the bottom of our hearts. 

This money funds in part many of KWAT's valuable projects: In fact, KWAT recently published a report on a new six month long health initiative, which ran from July to December of 2015 and was funded in part by GlobeMed at Dartmouth. In these six months alone, KWAT interacted with 12,861 cases, including 8138 patients in their Out Patient and In Patient departments of their clinics, 1782 cases in Village Health Outreach, 475 women to which they provided maternal health care education, anti-natal care, delivery, and post-natal care, and hundreds more for various other educational, training, and laboratory testing services. KWAT's clinics ran in five areas: Maijayang, Loi Je IDP camp, Lana Zupja IDP camp, Danai Awng Lawt village in Kachin State, and Hupyet Hka San Yang village in Northern Shan State. 

In addition, KWAT was able to play a crucial role in saving the lives of 11 refer patients with serious medical conditions that needed to be transported to a hospital in order to receive the necessary care. These patients included a 9 month old child with a hernia who was not responding to the conventional treatments at KWAT's clinics and had to be transported to China in order to get an operation done. The boy, from the Pa Kahtawng IDP camp, luckily survived. Another included a 43-year old woman with complications and bleeding during her pregnancy due to an unknown tumor in her uterus. Without the work of KWAT, these individuals would not have gotten the required medical treatment, and we are very grateful to be able to support KWAT in their valuable work, especially since the Burmese Army still poses a threat for the KWAT staff who work in the IDP camps. 

GlobeMed at Dartmouth directly supports a laboratory for the health branch of KWAT, which tests for glucose levels, HIV, STIs, HB level, Hepatitis B and C, and malaria. In this six month period, KWAT received 884 people who were tested for dieseases and were able to be successfully referred for the necessary treatment. In addition, education on the importance of blood screening and maintanence of health was able to be done. 

Despite these remarkable achievements, KWAT sees much room for improvement and the need for continued healthcare, education, advocacy, and general support for IDPs in Burma. They plan on continuining their important work in 2016 with the goal of helping 30,000 people (up from 22,000 in 2015). 

For this reason, GlobeMed at Dartmouth continues to work to fundraise for our partner organization. Since our last update, we have nearly completed our annual Valentine's Day Balloon Delivery fundraiser. More importantly, we have nearly finished planning our annual Benefit Dinner for KWAT -- an event in which we raise awareness about KWAT, advocate for those suffering from the civil conflicts in Burma, and provide a platform for community members to engage in constructive conversation about global health. We also plan on collecting donations to meet our annual fundraising goal for KWAT. 

In order for KWAT to continue being a positive impact on the lives of so many, we rely on the support of donors like you.

Thank you so much for your role in this work. 

Sincerely,

GlobeMed at Dartmouth