Boosting Hopes for Healthier Communities

Yovette Mumford, President of Safety Medicals Supply International, Inc., donated 135,500 SafetyTip Needles with Syringes to Hope for a Healthier Humanity in April 2008. The SafetyTip needles, invented by Ms. Mumford is a donation that is timely support to the HHH programs, because the needles are designed to prevent needle-stick injuries. This product helps reduce the chances of a healthcare professional contracting a blood-borne infectious disease during medical procedures.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius once advised that it is good to give a man a fish but immensely better to teach him how to fish. Because you give him a fish, he will eat for a day; because you teach him to fish, he will eat for life. Hope for a Healthier Humanity (HHH) takes a similar strategy for building healthier communities. The organization does not just set up free clinics, in one day and gone the next. On the contrary, HHH resolutely pursues its belief that in order to provide sustainable healthcare, education is the key.

Hope for a Healthier Humanity is a non-sectarian, non-profit, charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York. Its primary purpose is to provide both technical and clinical education and practical training to students in the health sciences and healthcare providers residing in the countries of the Caribbean and Latin America.

By pursuing these programs, HHH ensures that healthcare professionals in these countries can provide a sustainable higher level of healthcare to the poorest peoples in these countries. Since incorporation in 2001, HHH has undertaken education and training programs in several countries:

• A continuing program to fight TB among the women and children of Haiti, which was subsequently expanded to the Dominican Republic, with funding support from the National SEIU Health Workers Union and the New York State Department of Health.

• Establishment of the Pan American Health Care Network in the Honduras.

• Conduct of medical and dental brigades in the Latin American region and distribution of supplies and equipment.

• Continuing programs in dental education and dentists’ training in regard to dental treatment for HIV/AIDS patients.

• Establishment of a Nursing Community Health Advocate program in the Honduras.

Because these countries need supplies of medicine and equipment to provide medical and dental care, HHH tries to attract donations of these products for shipment to the Caribbean and Latin American developing countries. The donations come in a variety of forms.

US drug companies donate pharmaceuticals and funds for educational programs, including missions, for medical and dental training. Maersk Sealand provides “less than cost” shipping services of cargo stored in a pro-bono space at a warehousing company in Newark. Donations of equipment and supplies also come from hospitals, private healthcare practitioners and healthcare systems in the US.

~ Staff writer for SafetyIssues.com