Medicine in Action on Kilimanjaro

Medicine in Action, also known as MIA, is taking medical volunteering to new altitudes with its latest trek to Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro, according to an article in OBG Management. MIA members just took part in a fundraising climb of the mountain. They hope to raise $60,000 on the climb and will set up a temporary obstetrical clinic to treat patients while in Africa.

MIA founder, Deborah Chong, M.D., works as an obstetrician at Santa Clara Valley Hospital in San Jose, Calif. She started the nonprofit in 2005 to bring obstetric care to women in the developing world.

"Of the more than one-half million women who die of a complication of pregnancy or childbirth each year, approximately 99% are in a developing country," Dr. Chong writes.

MIA is a growing organization and is working mostly in Tanzania and Jamaica, where Dr. Chong was born and raised. Chong estimates that MIA volunteers have "treated approximately 3,000 patients, screened 533 women for cervical cancer, and performed more than 100 surgical procedures during eight medical missions."

The group's first mission to Tanzania took along six health-care volunteers who hailed from New York, Florida and California. They worked in Africa with another group of volunteers from International Health Partners-Tanzania.

Working as a team, they treated "approximately 135 patients at a local clinic and performed nine gyn[ecological] surgical procedures," Dr. Chong writes. "Staff diagnosed many cases of HIV infection and other sexually transmitted infections. One of the volunteers held a women’s health educational evening at a local mosque."

Photo courtesy of Tambako the Jaguar, via Flickr