By Lee Weingrad | Director, Surmang Foundation
There is a land that time forgot, hidden behind the highest mountains in the world. It's a place of yak-herding nomads, farmers, monks, nuns, moms and dads. It’s a place where there are no days of the week, no family names, no watches, no weeks, no months, no years and few cars. It’s a place where no one speaks Mandarin Chinese, and almost no one can read or write their own language, Khampa Tibetan. It sits apart from the rest of us cut off by 2 /16,000' passes, with very long snowy winters and short glorious summers.
It is Surmang.
But it is not a place that disease forgot. It is a place with no doctors, with world record-high infant and maternal mortality and also communicable diseases. It is a place whose culture grew in antiquity in isolation. For 25 years Surmang Foundation has operated quality public health, at clinic in this remote part of East Tibet.
With your help and that of GG.org, we've treated over 130,000 patients for free and reduced maternal mortality to zero in 2011 and kept it near there since. Now it's time to go further. Here is where we need your help:
Public Health. We are expanding our public health calling to include three infectious diseases:
They are all treatable. They are all nearly 100% prevalent in each and every Surmang Khampa Tibetan.
Capital Construction. In addition we’ve gone from being the only new building on the block to being one of the oldest buildings. So we are in the beginning stages of renewing our footprint:
In the shadow of the vast number of international foundations that have left China, we remain. Getting support from people like you who read this appeal, not being connected with a big School of Public Health, Medical School, foreign government or international foundation, we've gone about our work for 25 years.
We depend on your help. As we say "when you help them, the feeling stays with you."
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