A Special Presentation
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SoH has developed a specific expertise: the ability to implement lasting and sustainable hospital projects that really meet the needs of the recipient countries and to introduce noble selfcare concept, “humanitarian action of the third kind”.
Founding Projects
Before we develop any specific medical center we first obtain the support and cooperation of local grassroots organizations sharing common humanitarian values with us. We work to share their energy and knowledge of the community in order that we may better meet the needs of people in their area. We attempt to be particularly sensitive to regional attitudes and customs, in order to find ways of working with people from within their culture rather than imposing values from outside the community. We also work closely with local authorities and institutions, and in turn these local authorities often donate land on which the medical centers are to be built or even provide installations to be restructured and equipped to become the new training hospitals. Once strong local partners have been identified, SoH helps them create the legal structure which will become the local organization. We then provide durable and concrete financial help until solvency can be obtained. Humanitarian action deeply rooted in uncompromising human values forms the basis of our platform. We set high standards, and we lay a strong foundation from the very beginning. This is the philosophy behind our initial strategy, because we are profoundly aware of the long list of children awaiting life-sustaining or life-enhancing surgery.
Developing the Program
Once the medical centers are to be constructed or restructured, Surgeons of Hope act as coordinator for the funding, construction, and equipping of each project. We also begin to project the eventual staffing requirements. Local surgeons and medical support staff will need to be trained locally as well as to be sent to learning facilities in the US and Europe. SoH also trains supporting technical staff, such as managers, accountants, and medical technicians. Exchanges between the local medical staff and the American-European medical teams will continue to be encouraged for the ongoing exchange of skills and for a better understanding of the unique challenges each faces. This teaching and training exchange is crucial to continue the transfer of skills and expertise in the use of high-level technology, so that the hospital projects may ultimately be entirely run by local teams. This approach of sustainable humanitarian action is encapsulated by our motto: “Curing and Training-Training to Cure.” This is the bedrock founding principle of medical centers. SoH and our training hospital form a partnership where both the best technology and the top skills are successfully transferred. This empowers emergent countries to catch up.
Operating Assistance
A crucial element in the SoH “Training to Cure” approach is that the hospital centers receive fee-paying patients from the area–patients who would otherwise have sought medical treatment outside their own country, but who will now be able to find treatment at high tech centers locally. There is ample incentive for this, as visas do not have to be obtained for foreign travel, travel expenses are eliminated, and the individuals requiring treatment do not need to be separated from friends and loved ones at a crucial time in their lives. An innovative fee-paying program helps to finance the surgical operations of disadvantaged children who otherwise would have no means or access to obtain life-saving or life-altering surgery. The Surgeons of Hope goal is that 50% of the surgical procedures will be made available to indigent children. The other 50% of patients will pay a fee for these services, but even this fee will be considerably less than the cost of going abroad for an equivalent surgical procedure. Those with means will gradually and indirectly pay for those with lesser means, guaranteeing that after a few years the hospital is financially self-sufficient. In the meantime, SoH, in cooperation with its American and European partners, will ensure the outside indispensable medical and technical assistance for the curing, training, and managing of hospitals, and will support the cost of it as well as the local post-operation expenses for the indigent children, over the first three years.This represents up to 50% of the total running cost of a training hospital and corresponds to the total amount of the expenses necessary to operate on the indigent children. In this way, the given center’s operation will reach financial solvency and will achieve the ultimate goal of autonomy after three years. Thus humanitarian relief becomes a genuine partnership between SoH and the medical facility, which are encouraged to run independently of the parent organization as soon as practically possible.
Partnership Support
Surgeons of Hope is able to reach its objectives through the generous support and contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations, pharmaceutical and medical equipment laboratories, American and European hospital units, and others who share our vision and our humanitarian outlook. We are people working together for the better good of mankind, and we have collectively contributed everything, from cash and supplies to expertise and equipment. Modern surgery is a miracle of science, which must be shared with human beings of limited means and in remote locations. And most especially, we have an urgent quest to bring the most advanced techniques to the children of the world who desperately need them.