D.O.E.R.S.

Friend of DOERS, Carol McGee, distributed prenatal vitamins in Myanmar on behalf of DOERS. Read her story and see photos:

“Dropping-off Vitamins in Burma (Myanmar) by Carol McGee

 A trip to Burma and Cambodia were never on my list of places to visit until my daughter Julie and her husband Craig moved to Yangon (Rangoon) in August of 2010 (2 days after they were married). An invitation to spend Christmas with them and Craig’s parents sent me on an adventure of a lifetime.  When I told Rob Turner, one of our SH parishioners and founder of DOERS (Dominican Overseas  Education & Relief Services) that I was going to Burma, he excitedly asked me if I could deliver pre-natal vitamins to a contact of his in Yangon.  Sounded like a great deal of intrigue, and before I could think about it, I said “Yes.  How do I do it?”

Burma is an underdeveloped country ruled by an authoritarian military regime, sanctioned by many countries including the United States for human rights violations and political oppression.  While it is a resource-rich country, its people suffer from pervasive government controls, inefficient economic policies, corruption, and rural poverty. Despite Burma’s emergence as a natural gas exporter, socio-economic conditions have deteriorated under the regime’s mismanagement, leaving most of the public in poverty, while military leaders and their business friends exploit the country’s ample natural resources. Public funding for health and education is among the lowest in the world. One hundred bottles of vitamins would help 50 women carry and deliver 50 (+) healthy babies.

Needless to say, I had been very worried about my daughter living there and my traveling there alone.  Now, I was a little worried about carrying “drugs” and getting through customs and security.  My imagination had me being detained or arrested.  That would really mess up my Christmas!  But Rob coached me on what I was to say and gave me  documentation stating that the vitamins were gifts from the people of the United States.  Surprisingly, my daughter said she thought we could get them through.   Probably the worst that could happen is that they would be confiscated.  It was worth a try!

All went well until I tried to go through customs in Yangon where I was pulled out of line and asked what I was doing with 100 bottles of pre-natal’s since they obviously weren’t for personal use.  I smiled (lots of smiling and bowing) and explained as Rob had coached me, “these are gifts from the people of the United States to help pregnant women.”  “Sorry,” they said, “You no have permission; you need  form!”  I think it helped that I didn’t understand most of what they were telling me.  I just kept saying over and over again “gift, gift, gift”.  After discussions with several agents, and multiple examinations of the bottles, the customs clerk finally said, “we let you bring now, not again!”  Ok – I’ll remember that!  And I just kept bowing and smiling and thanking them. 

The next day, I met with Fr. Robert  Hauzamung  and delivered the vitamins to him.  Fr. Robert is the son of one of our parishioners,  Lucas Langh &  Angela Neam and the brother of Sister Elizabeth who visited Boise to see her parents in 2010 and helped with religious education in the parish during that summer.  He was very grateful and very excited to hear news of his parents.  He would make sure the vitamins found their way to some nuns who ran health clinics outside of Yangon.

I spent a week in Burma and another week in Cambodia.  It  was like a National Geographic expedition.  My experiences there — the things I saw, the people I met—were life changing.  ”

Thanks Carol!

Phil came home from Iraq where he was doing top-secret Rambo missions. Then he put all the life saving medicine that we got from Kingsway Charities into plastic bins but not before photographing the labels to glean all the information. Then Phil drove me to Chicago; it kind of set the trip Phil, Rob, truck, Infowars, supplies, long long roads and sometimes donuts. The glorious hospitality of our family in Illinois was a blessing and playing with the kids there prepared us for lifting the many boxes to come.

Our most important partner is Cristo Salva Pat Havener. She is a special hero and has taught us lots of things. She, her husband Gary, and Jenn O’Brien let us stay at their house which was home base. At the start of the trip an important thing was helping organize the clinic pharmacy and bodega. Within the bodega was the pyriamid of prenatals which was still a very large pile. The boat was coming with more and so we had to get them to the women.

It rained relentlessly, but Phil drove fast. Pickup load after pickup load of supplies found there way into the hands of doctors, nurses, health workers and administrators. Eventually because a lot of organizations are headquartered in the capital, Tegucigalpa, the trip degenerated into countless returns (four) to that wretched city, but when the dust settled the prenatals were gone; except for one box…

We got out roughly $160,000 worth of supplies. This includes 58,000 doses of deworming medicine which is three times more than we’d ever done in a trip, but still not enough… parasites! We did ~3.2 million prenatals which is as much as all the prenatals that we’ve distributed in the previous nearly three years combined times five! It took over two years to help the first thousand pregnancies, and then it took less than a year to help the next 10,000. I still need to compile the list of everything with all the partners, but for example the stuff we got to Casa Aurora was staggering; just to list it is pages long. New organizations that we worked with are MAMA Project, USAID and Catholic Relief Services. I will write a separate Kinderfeeding update, but ultimately, though indirectly, the trip will have benefited over 50,000 people maybe 70,000 (considering that with albendazole it’s easy to help lots of people.) Not to overstate our role; we’re an intermediary niche of bigger things.

It cost DOERS roughly $2,000 for medicine and $2,000 for the truck which makes for a favorable cost benefit analysis. However, it was more than we had and DOERS is currently in the red, broke, wiped out. But with all the gloom, dire urgency and neverending struggle of the charity I’m still glad we helped all those women. Actually, really really glad and thankful! We completed 10,000 Healthy Baby Campaign! DOERS mission is to help kids grow up healthy and strong, and so I think it’s like a public health project. To guage success quantitatively October 2011 trip was the most successful trip ever. See we have this network of partners now that’s good, and if you look at the catch areas of everyone then the percentage of Honduras that we can cover is growing. Also our ability to get supplies has improved so those two things are pretty valuable.

The network of partners reaches >120 health centers, 10 clinics off the top of my head, 3 hospitals, feeding centers, 32 Peace Corps volunteers. There are 25 births per 1,000 people in Honduras a year. Given a population of 8 million then there are 200,000 births in the whole country. Given prenatals for 10,000 women that covers ~5% of the total. On average there will be 10,000 births in a catchment area 400,000 people. I think that all the people we know serve more than 400,000 people so our capacity is that we can reach more women. I think the new goal should be all of them.

I hope everyone is having a beautiful day. Here are some pictures from the trip, I picked ones that were indicative–truck and boxes:
Love,
Rob

It’s a fundraiser fraught with extreme danger for to help 10,000 Healthy Baby Campaign reach women of all the corners of the Earth. Caring about women’s reproductive health is cool.

Background:
Our friend Ann Turner was going to Cambodia which is one of the best countries in the whole world in August; wanting to help women and babies we bought some prenatal vitamins and so Ann took them to a children’s hospital in Siem Reap, and from there they found their way to the Women’s Resource Center Cambodia. Then we took prenatals to Tracy Haworth of Genesis World Missions in Boise, ID which is something we’ve been doing for a little more than a year, and we found out that the vitamins we’ve been sending have found their way to the regional hospital in Malindi, Kenya, historic port city on the Indian Ocean.