Doctors for Global Health

Promoting Health and Human Rights

With Those “Who Have No Voice”

www.dghonline.org

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Doctors for Global Health

•Doctors for Global Health is a non-profit organization with members/volunteers from a wide range of work areas and interests

•Nurses, medical doctors, teachers, lawyers, clerks, engineers, retired individuals, elementary, graduate, and professional school students, artists, business owners and others.

•DGH is a 100% volunteer staffed organization •We do have paid staff working in community projects but no paid administrative staff for the organization itself.

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DGH Mission To improve health and foster other human rights with those most in need by accompanying communities, while educating and inspiring others to action.

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To AccompanyAn important operating principle of DGH is Accompaniment, which:• Connotes a specific perspective, a paradigm of how to work with marginalized populations.

•Implies being invited rather than arriving without prior community knowledge or approval.

•Implies a participatory process WITH the community rather than imposing our way of thinking or doing things.

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To EqualizeDGH affirms that:• Every human being regardless of race, gender, class, religion, sexual

orientation, physical or mental disability, culture, age or other attribute, has the right to a life of dignity, equal treatment and social justice.

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To Liberate

• Some of its ideological roots can be found in Christian Liberation Theology, though it is not aligned with any religion.• Liberation Theology is based on a preferential option for the poor

and oppressed.

• In public health, this translates into solidarity in the interest of liberation. • Historically many development initiatives have posed no

real threat to the status quo, ensuring the interests of entrenched power were safeguarded.

• This is usually done at the expense of true sustainable development seeking to benefit the poor by significantly raising their quality of life.

DGH’s work is exemplified by Liberation Medicine:"The conscious, conscientious use of health to promote human dignity and social justice."

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Liberation Theology• Liberation Medicine holds that as

public health professionals, our role is that of 'accompanier' rather than administrator. • We are called to turn the power

structures around and work in the interest of human liberation rather than cost effectiveness, which often short-changes the poor. 

• Liberation Medicine is a channel of 'radical change' through which true development can come about. • It allows the poor to decide for

themselves what they need and empowers them to explore different ways of achieving their goals.

• Once the poor are empowered, true development, and liberation for health and healing, can occur.

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DGH Puts Its Mission and Principles Into Action

• Funding and carrying out projects in cooperation with local private non-profit, non-governmental organizations and interested communities that promote health, education and social justice.

• Bearing witness for human rights and against human rights violations.

• Educating and inspiring others,including students from all walks of life, by offering information, opportunities for service, a human rights perspective and world citizen role models.

• Directly sponsoring non-profit, nongovernmental projects deemed compatible with the principles of DGH. These include emphasizing Community-Oriented Primary Care, Human Rights Promotion (Liberation Medicine), Volunteerism and a Democratic approach to the project's administration. – Such projects also provide interested individuals with the

means of putting their volunteer spirit and ideas directly into action.

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DGH Currently Has Projects In:

• Burundi• El Salvador• Guatemala

• Mexico

• Peru

• Uganda

Past Projects:• Argentina• Honduras• Nicaragua• Nigeria

Friend/Awareness Building Groups:• Europe• USA

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Community-Oriented Primary Care

The provision of basic health services with the participation of the community in both the initiation and direction of activities. This approach addresses the health of the individual in the broader context of the community, which requires a multi-disciplinary approach, with attention to nutrition, sanitation, literacy, and mental and environmental health.

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Community-Oriented Primary Care

Project Example – Estancia, El Salvador

DGH has helped to support five Centers for Integral Child Development (CIDIs), which serve almost 200 pre-school children a year. Begun at the petition of the communities as a project of preventive mental health and early developmental stimulation for children, the CIDIs now also:

• Combat malnutrition by providing one healthy meal a day. Parents and volunteers prepare the food and learn recipes using soy for protein. • Provide the children classes on human rights and non-violence. • Provide ongoing training to twelve women from the surrounding communities in early childhood education to serve as the teachers.

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Participatory Investigation

Being invited by the community, working with it to explore its strengths and weaknesses in health, establishing priorities toward better health, developing initiatives to address the chosen priorities and evaluating their success. This often leads to projects that emphasize social wellbeing and are vital to the health of the community as a whole.

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Participatory InvestigationProject Example – Cabañas, El Salvador

A DGH volunteer responded to the community’s request to investigate if the local farmers’ use of pesticides was posing a health risk.• He trained local students to conduct interviews of community farmers on their pesticide use and enter it into a computer.• After four months of hard work, the results were presented by the students to an audience of about 50 community members, including the community council, teachers and farmers. The study found that:• 29% of farmers discarded the contaminated water used to wash the spraying tank in the creek. • 23% used pesticide containers to store drinking water. • Most farmers did not use personal protective equipment. •Children worked the farms, being exposed to dangerous pesticides.

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Human Rights

As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, recognizing the inherent dignity and worth of the human person, the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, and the need to promote social progress and better standards of life, is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

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Human RightsProject Example – Chiapas, Mexico:

DGH has been accompanying 35 isolated, indigenous, autonomous communities that have decided not to accept services from the Mexican government because of its maltreatment of the indigenous people, and are struggling to manage their collective resources.

• DGH provides volunteer health professionals to rural Hospital San Carlos.• A DGH-supported Mexican physician coordinates a Community Health Worker (CHW) project. He provides the CHWs with training in nutrition, vaccination, parasite treatment and giving vitamin A to prevent night blindness. • The CHWs are also starting community vegetable gardens and constructing environmentally-friendly stoves.

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Art & Social JusticeDGH believes there is an intrinsic relation between art, health, education and human rights that makes it possible to explore Human Rights and other aspects of Social Justice through the creativity and healing that art engenders.

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Art & Social JusticeProject Example – Morazán, El Salvador:

How to combat years of corporate advertising in favor of giving babies bottled milk instead of breast milk? Health Promoters used popular theater to get this important message across to community members.

• As the play begins, an off-stage rooster crows and a radio announcer gives the hour as 4:30 am and, with ranchera (Mexican country) music in the background, reads an ad for "Super-Vitamina Gringa." A typical breakfast scene in a one-room bamboo home lays out the plot of a child who is breast-fed and a neighbor’s infant who is not, and thus has chronic diarrhea and poor growth.• A Health Promoter appears to give counsel and, using sock puppets, directs a play within the play.

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Join the DGH Movement

Doctors for Global Health welcomes the support of individuals, organizations and corporations who share its goals and beliefs. Visit www.dghonline.org to:• Learn more about DGH projects

and philosophy• Become a DGH member • Find ways to volunteer• Join our mailing list• Make a donation