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Empowering Communities in Panama

April 21, 2015

DARIEN, PANAMA

Empowering under-resourced communities, resolving global health and economic disparities, and improving quality of life are the main goals of Global Medical Brigades. Twelve years after the first medical brigade visit to Honduras, Global Medical Brigades has grown into an internationally recognized program encouraging participation from globally minded university students with a desire to give back. Last August, a chapter from the City University of New York Macaulay traveled to Panama, armed with supplies from Globus Relief, to provide quality health initiatives to Latino/Indigenous communities that have limited access to health care.

Volunteers worked together with licensed medical and dental professionals to provide service at two clinics. Over the course of three days, 283 children and 210 adults were seen. Through mobile clinics in these communities, each patient received a physician consultation, public health education, prescribed medication, access to diagnostic exams, and restorative dental care as necessary.

Alla Uts, a student from Hunter College, said, “Within only a few days, we medically assisted a little over 400 patients, constructed latrines for families, and educated both adults and children on the importance of clean water, healthy foods, and exercise. We would not have been able to achieve such results without teamwork. All 64 brigaders worked in unity to build the foundations for self-sustainability and to create an astonishing and unforgettable experience.”

In addition to the Medical Brigades, a Public Health Brigade and an Environmental Brigade, whose purpose is the improvement of sanitation and environment preservation, also made the trip to Panama to help families build compost latrines, dig trenches, and plant seeds. In one week, the participants in these brigades not only made a difference in Panama, but, more importantly, became citizens of the world, recognizing what can be accomplished when humankind works together.

About the Author

Globus Relief

Globus Relief was founded in 1996. While working in the salvage retail industry, two Salt Lake City businessmen were saddened to see viable medical and hygiene supplies frequently sent to landfills. Certain that these surplus resources could be rescued and put to good use, they created Globus Relief to efficiently channel overstocked, gently used, or short-dated supplies to humanitarian projects in Utah and around the world.

Since our founding, Globus Relief has distributed over $1 billion (fair market value) of supplies to more than 800 charities at work in over 140 countries. Twenty full-time employees oversee the work of gathering, processing, and distributing humanitarian supplies in our 100,000-s.f. warehouse in Salt Lake City, Utah. Volunteers contribute an average of 225 labor hours per week, the equivalent of 5.6 additional full-time employees.

Globus Relief is known for strong financial efficiency, historically keeping administrative and fundraising expenses to under 3% of our total budget.