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Physicians for Peace

People always ask me, how do you get your story ideas? I realize I cover a wide range of topics so it’s an appropriate question. The short answer is I am endlessly curious and I try to engage in life as much as I can. I’ll give you an example, an old friend of mine, a hugely talented entrepreneur named Court Coursey, invited me up to a dinner party in Palm Beach. Before dinner, a group of us walked down the street to a cocktail party where I had no idea what to expect. Low and behold a man stands up and begins to make a presentation. His name is Ron Sconyers and he’s the Chief Executive Officer of an organization called Physicians for Peace. I perched on the side of a chair in the living room and listened intently while various members of Physicians for Peace delivered short presentations. I thought what a terrific organization! And so here I am.

Physicians for Peace bills itself as an international humanitarian non-profit medical education organization.

So … what does that mean? When the CEO stood up he provided a parable "if you give a man a fish you can feed him for a day. If you teach a man how to fish? You can feed him for a lifetime." Basically they’re not just coming in and helping people. They are teaching them how to help themselves. This idea is what separates them from other similar non-profits like Doctors Without Boarders.

The MISSION STATEMENT at Physicians for Peace is to further the cause of world peace and international goodwill by providing quality medical education and care to those in need. To date, they’ve completed programs in 50 different countries. How it works is they’ll send in a team of medical volunteers who specialize in the areas of care the country needs most. These teams will stay from one to six weeks.

During that time they train local medical professionals and begin all sorts of medical programs, which the host countries sustain and replicate. They also, however, offer their expertise by treating the people, reshaping eye sockets, correcting urinary and genital defects, fitting prosthetic limbs, repairing burn scars and clef palates. They’ve even done open-heart surgery and performed a range of cancer therapies.

Physicians for Peace was legally founded in 1989 by internationally recognized humanitarian Dr. Charles E. Horton, Sr., on the principle that those who desire to heal owe allegiance to no one country, ethnicity or creed. And that’s where the “peace” mentioned in their name fits into the equation.

They have medical volunteers from diverse cultures and opposing sides of ethnic and international conflicts working side by side, fostering this idea of a community that transcends race or culture. A few examples: Physicians for Peace have united teams of doctors from Iran and Iraq, Turkey and Greece, the Philippines and Japan…and, yes, even Palestine and Israel.

What’s got these volunteers from places facing bitter divides and even violence working so well together? A dyer need. The developing world carries 90 percent of the global disease burden yet has only 10 percent of the medical resources, this according to the United Nations Foundation. And most of these diseases are curable…we’ve had the treatment since the 1950s.

I was hit by the reality of this need that night in Palm Beach when a doctor whose specialty is OBGYN. She stood up and told us that 1 in every 12 women die in child birth in Liberia. About 1 in every 6,000 women dies in childbirth here in the US. WOW, I thought. She went on to share her story of traveling to Liberia and teaching everything from midwifery to actual birthing procedures. But what struck me was the ending line of her presentation: “If you heal someone, you help one person. If you teach someone to heal, you help many." It was incredibly moving.

To learn more about Physicians for Peace check out their web site….www.physiciansforpeace.org/

posted by Jason Parsley @ 11:30 PM