Mission & History...

President's Message

Dr Leo Lagasse President and Co-Founder Medicine for Humanity

“THE WORLD IS CHANGING”

We live in a world that presents great challenges but also great opportunities for groups like Medicine for Humanity. I believe there is a shift taking place in our collective consciousness, a tipping point wherein there is a great need for people to know hope, to be healed and to provide healing - and to experience the true miracle of giving. For women in developing countries in the 21st Century, the diagnosis of invasive cancer is a death sentence. A woman in Eastern Africa can die from childbirth. Most Americans cannot conceive of a situation where unavailable medical care results in a 15 year-old pregnant girl giving birth a dead child, then suffering a massive whole in her bladder (urinary fistula) caused by prolonged labor and then, tragically, this young woman is cast out by her husband and village because of her inability to control her urine and bowels. We cannot conceive of this here because it is nearly totally preventable by appropriate pregnancy management, yet it happens to many hundreds of women a year in underdeveloped countries.

“MEDICAL EDUCATION - A BRIGHT FUTURE"

I believe women are the portal through which a global-wide movement to provide medical education to underserved nations will proceed. This movement has already begun and is having significant impact in many places in Africa where they have embraced education. There is an urgency to accelerate this movement. At Medicine for Humanity, we are developing our own set of customized Global Medical Education (GME) programs to serve the specific needs of the people and places we have visited and worked. Local medical personnel in these countries will have internet-based access to current medical lectures, conferences and surgical procedures which originate from the finest American medical schools like the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. This approach, made possible only recently by modern technology, will bring to these countries a quality of medical information never before available and will revolutionize medical education in these countries.

The effects of this modern, radical upgrade of medical education in these underdeveloped countries can scarcely be overestimated. I look forward to forging new partnerships with the wonderful donors, doctors, and others who share our vision for a better, healthier world for women and for all people.

-Leo Lagasse, President and Co-Founder Medicine for Humanity

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